


The Blood That Ended the War

by hobbitdragon



Series: Witcher Fics [9]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Adopted Children, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arranged Marriage, Canon-Typical Violence, Enemies to Lovers, Families of Choice, Flashbacks, Hand & Finger Kink, Hypervigilance, M/M, Offscreen Canonical Character Death, Oral Fixation, Polyamory, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Scent Kink, Shapeshifting, Slow Build, Telepathic Bond, Vampire Culture, Vampire War AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:28:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 63,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27636817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hobbitdragon/pseuds/hobbitdragon
Summary: Five years ago, vampires started an all-out war on the North. Now, Geralt's been chosen for a diplomatic marriage to two vampires in Nazair. It's theoretically supposed to end the hostilities. He's pretty sure it's a death sentence, but by this point, they don't have any other choice.
Relationships: Background Geralt/Eskel and Geralt/Yen, Dettlaff van der Eretein/Emiel Regis Rohellec Terzieff-Godefroy, Dettlaff van der Eretein/Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Emiel Regis Rohellec Terzieff-Godefroy
Series: Witcher Fics [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1731811
Comments: 403
Kudos: 323





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TrashyTime](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrashyTime/gifts).



> AUTHOR'S NOTES: I got assigned to write fic for TrashyTime in 2 different fandom exchanges I ended up having to drop from, and this fic is the result of both those exchange assignments. So thanks to Trashy for requesting ships and dynamics that got me going! The exchange in which I started writing this fic was the Horror Exchange 2020, and it shows in the gothic horror style of the first chapter. Beyond that, massive thanks to my 3 beta-readers, DSudis, ChocoChipBiscuit, and BrightEyedJill for helping me get unstuck in writing and giving me feedback on how to make this fic so much better!!
> 
> FIC NOTES: This fic takes place in a universe that’s altered from canon in several ways. First, Geralt never met Regis as he did in the books. I haven’t read the books, so I’m unsure exactly how much that would change, but just assume the events of the hansa somehow work out regardless. This fic also takes place in a complete AU starting from a few months before Geralt’s “death.” As a result, none of the events of the games have happened and the war has occurred instead. In terms of timeline, the events of this fic take place in the same chronological time period as the end of game 3. With that said, some of the characters who die in the games are mentioned to have died offscreen in this fic. This includes Vesemir.
> 
> If you like the idea of a Vampire War AU, astolat has a shorter fic written in a somewhat similar AU [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11209086).
> 
> CONTENT WARNING:  
> This fic contains repeated allusions to and occasional brief descriptions of past canon-typical violence. That includes mentions/brief descriptions of past dismemberment, rape, mind control, captivity & enslavement, and other forms of brutality. Geralt spends a great deal of the fic expecting that all of these things will happen to him, and does not want a relationship with Regis or Dettlaff as a result. With that said, there is no onscreen rape or violence during the course of the fic, and this fic will have an ultimate happy ending.

Geralt wouldn’t ever let himself voice all the stupid things going through his head, but he couldn’t stop thinking them as he walked barefoot along the moonlit road. ‘Is this really necessary’ and ‘Are you sure there’s no better way’ were both idiotic and insensitive questions given how many people were dead. ‘I don’t want to do this’ had the benefit of being true, but was still irrelevant. 

_ Yes, this is necessary, _ Geralt told himself sternly, and while there might theoretically be a better way, nobody had found it.  _ It doesn’t matter what you want, _ he then added. Besides, he had done worse things in order to save lives. This one was just more personal. 

A bruxa had come to see him in Neunreuth three weeks ago to take his measurements, and she had returned again a week ago to do a fitting with him and make alterations. If nothing else, the robes he now wore fit him beautifully and were comfortable. Geralt would give the vampire seamstress that much. The fact that he was completely bare underneath the layers of green fabric implied something he was trying hard not to think about, but Geralt comforted himself with the fact that some Skellige garb was worn without underwear as well. So perhaps his bare ass didn’t signify anything. If the war that both witchers and men had fought with vampires over the last five years had taught them anything, it was that even witchers knew little about higher vampire culture. Vampires had blended into human societies for most of history, so how they dressed while amongst themselves was not something any witcher knew. 

Geralt had never thought about what he’d wear to his wedding because witchers didn’t marry. But if he had given it any thought, he would not have guessed that it would be ceremonial vampire robes embroidered with what he could only guess to be sigils of power or something of cultural significance. The gauzy shift of pale yellow that made up the layer closest to Geralt’s skin rubbed silky-soft against his thighs as he walked. 

Not that this was a real wedding anyway. He was an offering of flesh made to appease a brutal foe who knew they would win and had merely tired of the effort of fighting. The terms of the armistice were a gift too good to be true, and thus had to be a trick. But they had no other option than to act as if the offer were real, so it had been sworn: if Geralt went through with this, vampires would kill no more humans, and both sides would mutually turn over their prisoners. 

The warmth of the August night in the coastal forest of Nazair would have been beautiful under other circumstances. The circumstances being what they were, however, Geralt would almost have preferred the weather to match his mood. He  _ felt _ like thunderstorms and lightning, but instead the full moon this month had come on a clear, warm night. This meant that the hanging moss above him didn’t drip on him as he walked, and that the soft drifts of leaves upon the road were dry under the soles of his feet. He had been shod until recently, in cheap sandals he’d abandoned by the side of the road. The vampires had specified that he come barefoot so he couldn’t hide weapons in his boots, and he didn’t want to void the agreement just because he had tender feet.

As he moved through the still air underneath the trees, he paid anxious attention to the scents that came with every breath. He knew it was futile. Most vampires disguised their natural scents, and moreover they had learned to stay downwind from witchers over the long years of fighting. But Geralt couldn’t help it. In every shadow he feared he saw shining eyes, in every breath of loam and laurel and redwood he thought he caught the faint musk of vampire bodies. They  _ had _ to be watching him. They would want to know that he was coming as promised, bare of weapons and armor. Not quite defenseless (no witcher was ever truly unarmed unless he was in dimeritium, and not truly even then) but at least carrying none of the silver blades that had felled so many vampires. 

Geralt personally had destroyed members of every species of the so-called lesser vampires, the ones who were without language or learning. And he had felled higher vampires too; alps and bruxae and katakans, and even, to his mixed pride and terror now, two of what witchers called the Deathless. To the horror of humans and witchers alike, it had been discovered that vampires included a species which could, if given enough time, regrow limbs and even whole bodies. The only solution witchers had ever found for neutralizing the Deathless was beheading and then trimming off the new flesh every year as it regrew. Even then, the heads retained sentience and responsiveness. At first, witchers had kept the heads in the open air--but by the moving of the lips and tongue, the vampires could still talk after a fashion, and would mouthe near-silent curses at their jailer-executioners. After the first year of the war, witchers had begun to keep the heads in jars of saltwater. After a day or two submerged, the heads seemed to lose consciousness and could be kept with less distress for everyone involved. Even so, the macabre jars now kept in secret locations across the continent, including Kaer Morhen, haunted Geralt’s nightmares. Kaer Morhen boasted nine. 

If tonight went according to plan, which seemed unlikely, every such container would soon be returned to the vampires. Assuming it didn’t go to plan, Geralt would soon be dead and beyond worrying about it. 

Geralt forcibly reminded himself of his purpose as he reached his destination. This was the only treaty that had ever been offered and there was no option but to accept. He repeated this as the trees thinned and then fell away, revealing a sprawling estate nestled into a hollow in the land and guarded behind high stone walls. To the east of the estate the forest loomed dark and to the west lay the coastal cliffs. The sudden wind as Geralt left the trees carried with it the sharp smell of the ocean. 

Probably this place had once belonged to humans, as the mansion’s design and architecture followed traditional Nazairi styles. But its current owners seemed to disregard the Southern trend of manicured gardens, as evidenced by the trailing vines of morning glory, grape, and blackberry which had almost devoured the walls and had even begun to climb on the wrought-iron gates. If the grounds were left unattended much longer, the gates would seal themselves closed. 

But then, Geralt realized, most species of vampires had no need for gates. They could either jump over walls as high as this, or fly. 

In the meantime, the gates had been left open, presumably for him. The hairs rose on his neck as he passed over the threshold. 

_ Into the heart of darkness, _ he thought to himself. This was where he would meet his doom. 

Maybe he would die here like so many others before him, his blood only fuelling the power and fury of his enemies. Maybe he would be impaled upon long ivory claws. Or maybe it would be slower than that. Maybe he would be kept as livestock like the humans in the vampire dungeon witchers had discovered in Toussaint, bled over and over again for his owners’ delectation. A witcher could survive such treatment far longer than a human. 

At least he could not be used for breeding stock. That was one horror he would be spared. 

Yet as his belly clenched in fear, new scents came to him and his nostrils flared in surprise. It wasn’t just blackberries he could smell, slowly ripening as summer reached its height, but a whole variety of stone-fruit trees as well as (if his nose didn’t deceive him) an herb garden of the sort he was accustomed to seeing kept by herbalists and witchers. He could clearly detect celandine, balisse, and arenaria.

He had just begun to puzzle at this--what use could vampires possibly have for celandine?--when he caught a strong gust of mandrake blooms. His curiosity soured into anxiety. Mandrake naturally grew all sorts of places, but it  _ especially _ loved to grow in the rich, fertile soil of graveyards. That mandrakes grew  _ here _ could not possibly mean anything good. If he turned the soil of this garden, how many human bones would he find buried there?

The breeze also carried a murmur of distant voices. He tried to count how many speakers he could hear but the distance made it impossible. 

Between one breath and the next a figure appeared ahead of Geralt on the path. He startled and his hand shaped the Quen before he could think. Its golden glow marred his night vision.

A second later Geralt dropped the shield--there was no point in defending himself now--and instead fixed his gaze upon the small, slender figure before him. Thanks to his own foolish gesture, the features were more difficult to make out.

“Welcome!” the vampire greeted him. “I am pleased to inform you that you are right on time, with a quarter of an hour till midnight. Just long enough for us to be formally introduced before we go to the officiant.”

At this, the vampire bowed, the gesture deep and formal in an almost Nilfgaardian style. “I am Emiel Regis Rohellec Terzieff-Godefroy,” the vampire said as he straightened, “But I beg that you just call me Regis. I am aware that the whole thing together is a bit of a mouthful.” 

Geralt blinked in dawning shock as he recognized the name:  _ this _ was one of the creatures to which he had been promised. 

There was no suitable response to this introduction--the vampire doubtless already knew who Geralt was, and Geralt had nothing else to say to him. What other white-haired witcher wearing wedding clothes would be arriving here at this time? In lieu of speaking, Geralt studied the man--the  _ beast _ \--before him. 

Regis wore his most humanish skin, for now, though Geralt knew that could change at any moment and doubtless would before the night was done. Regis’s ‘human’ shape was pale and dark-haired, with long sideburns that came down his cheekbones and jaw. As Geralt’s night-vision cleared, he realized that Regis had a strangely unremarkable human form, looking rather more like a fussy little tax collector than a vampire. It was, Geralt had to concede, a clever choice for a vampire to look so unremarkable. Most people, himself included, would expect vampires to pick a face more likely to attract erotic attention.

But the meaning of a face changed when one knew a monster lay behind it, so while nothing in the visible physiognomy was designed to give alarm, Geralt looked on it in tight-lipped unhappiness. 

Regis regarded him in return with black, dispassionate eyes. Then he held out one arm, gesturing Geralt into the back garden. 

“Come,” he said quietly. “Let us do what we have come here to do.” 

Geralt went. He kept his footfalls silent out of reflex, but his caution was pointless. When they rounded the side of the house, he found a large slate-paved circle of the garden with a fountain at one end--and it was packed with vampires. At the sight and scent of him, all of them turned their faces toward him and fell silent. 

Glittering, unfriendly eyes watched him from a variety of faces. Few other than Regis had bothered with their human forms, so there were the horns and immense ears of katakans, the tight, vicious faces of alps and bruxae, and the spotted skin one often saw in the halfway-forms of the Deathless. At least two of them were visible in that shape--already too many for Geralt to win against even had he been fully armed and armored. What little fight he could offer without his silver sword was meaningless. Igni accomplished nothing except to infuriate the Deathless, and while a well-aimed Aard might break their bones, they would mend within minutes. 

Which was when Geralt saw it wasn’t just higher vampires here. Stalking around the garden were a trio of ekkimarae, a massive garkain, and even a pair of small fleders.  _ Pets, _ Geralt realized, guard-dogs such as wealthy humans might have on their grounds, but ten times stronger and faster than even the largest and most vicious breed of hound. 

The scent that Geralt had been desperately trying to detect on the road was dense here. He could smell little beyond the collected vampire bodies. Some of them wore perfume, but most had not bothered with it, as it was often merely worn to disguise the musky scent that even an unenhanced human could identify. 

Scanning the crowd again as they moved, this time Geralt spotted what had to be the humans. In order to prove that both sides had honored the arrangement, human witnesses had been allowed as long as they were also dressed appropriately--meaning no weapons of any kind. Geralt recognized none of the five, but one of them, an older woman, caught his eye and gave him a pitying look, rather like one might give to someone heading to the gallows.

Regis led Geralt over to a table set up along one side of the garden. The vampire poured something from a dark bottle into a cup and then turned and held it out. With reluctance Geralt took it, bringing it up to his nose to smell. It let off a powerful odor of mandrake and alcohol. 

“Is this some sort of drug to make me more pliable?” he asked. 

For a long moment Regis regarded him. 

“Only insofar as alcohol makes any mortal more pliable,” he said at last. “If you do not want it, simply set it aside. But I thought perhaps you might welcome some of what humans call ‘liquid courage.’ We can smell your fear from yards away.”

This earned Regis exactly the glare it deserved. Yet after a pause, Geralt drank down the cup he had been given. As he did so, Geralt silently dared the vampire to have been lying about its contents. 

What greeted Geralt’s tongue, however, was just a very fine liquor, spicy and honeyed and very potent. He could detect nothing in it that would be dangerous even to a human, much less to him. It merely warmed his mouth and belly. It would indeed help soften what would come next, at least for a little while. 

The lingering heat of it nonetheless went cold when he wondered if the roots in this brew had been grown from human corpses, and his belly turned downright icy when something big emerged from behind a small group of bruxae. Geralt recognized that gait at once--a Deathless. This one not only had not bothered with its human shape but had skipped right over the humanoid one as well. The powerful muscles of its shoulders shifted as it padded over to them on all fours, wings folded along its sides. The black of its fur caught the moonlight and glittered. 

When it drew close to Geralt, it inclined its head to him, showing him the glossy fur on its nape.

“Geralt of Rivia, may I introduce Dettlaff van der Eretein,” Regis said quietly. 

Geralt’s wary stare went wider still as he recognized the other name. This beast was the leader of all of the vampires in Nazair--a group which had stayed out of the hostilities, unlike their brutal cousins in Toussaint. Dettlaff’s neutrality was why he had been chosen by his kind for this purpose, as he was one of the few Deathless who could even remotely be considered anything other than an immediate death sentence. 

Geralt had not been at the negotiations, as no witchers had been invited. But when he had been informed of what had been decided for him in his absence, the diplomats had told him that the treaty was not actually being offered by the northern vampires, the ones responsible for the war, but by the southern ones. Specifically, by someone referred to only as the Southern Elder, whom Geralt had been forced to infer was some sort of queen. Why her word should be of any use in controlling the actions of a group of vampires she didn’t even rule had made no sense at all to Geralt, or indeed to anyone else he knew. But the diplomats had been informed that her word was law, somehow, and thus that Geralt’s compliance was required if any of the kingdoms of the north wished to survive. 

With a kind of mixed relief and disgust, Geralt settled into the knowledge that this monster was the object of Geralt’s journey. The fact that Dettlaff already had a mate--Regis--was apparently a mere technicality to vampires.

Halting and furious, Geralt finally bowed in return, hating the way it brought his face closer to the beast’s. He had never seen a Deathless so close while in this form. He had only seen them flying far above during battles on the full moon, or swooping on men and witchers to tear them apart with teeth and claws. Geralt could not tell if Dettlaff’s choice to greet him in this skin was a threat or merely tradition. But the blood gutters in Dettlaff’s lips, which did nothing to conceal the huge fangs--how could that be anything but a threat? A reminder to Geralt that his purpose here was to submit and be a symbol of defeat. 

“This is a travesty,” Dettlaff growled. “He stinks of fear!”

With a glance at Geralt that almost read as apologetic, Regis replied, “Well, yes, but as we established, given his prior experience, we can hardly expect him to feel delight.” 

This only got a low grunt of disgust from Dettlaff, who shook his big inhuman head.

Geralt’s stomach knotted. He hadn’t even considered what would happen if the vampires decided  _ they _ didn’t want  _ him.  _ If this treaty was no more than a trick of some sort, or if Geralt were rejected, the remaining fighting forces might survive a few more years if they were lucky. But long-term...

Yet despite Dettlaff’s displeasure, it seemed that the moment had arrived. Like troops directed upon a battlefield, the host of vampires moved and flowed around each other with choreographed ease, making space upon the slates for the ceremony.

Standing by the fountain was an ancient katakan, fur thin with age and the span of its ears sagging with the weight of gold and jewels upon them. Geralt guessed that this was the officiant. 

With a sigh, Regis undid the fastenings on his robes, folding them neatly and laying them on the table where he had poured Geralt the mandrake liquor. For a moment, Geralt wondered if the undressing was a presage of him being attacked--but instead Regis, too, abandoned his pretense at humanity. 

With a grim sort of fascination, Geralt noticed that even though Regis and Dettlaff were the same species of vampire, the shape of their noses, ears, and dentition varied significantly from one another. Where Dettlaff had small, almost stunted ears, a flat nose, and long slanting canines, Regis’s nose ruffled up into a large leaf shape with ears to match, and it was his incisors that sharpened into deadly points. Geralt tried to occupy himself with considering the logic of this as Regis gestured with his head for Geralt to follow him, flexing his massive leathery wings once before falling onto all fours. 

Geralt had half-heartedly hoped that Regis was only a katakan, but that was clearly not the case. He, too, was a full-blown Deathless. 

The weight of all the eyes upon him made Geralt’s feet feel heavy. He could barely breathe as he followed the pair of vampires and took the indicated place between them. 

The katakan officiant regarded Geralt with an unreadable expression. 

“We gather here to end a war,” it said in a deep, grinding voice. “For more than two millennia we lived in secrecy in this world until at last the greediest among us pursued dominion over the peoples of this world. Our misguided kin led the vulnerable among us to die upon the blades of witchers and men and brought the peoples of this world to needless slaughter. It falls upon us to take responsibility for their misuse of power.”

Whatever statement Geralt had expected, it had not been this. But they could  _ afford _ to  _ say _ this now, couldn't they. Talk was cheap. The brutality would come later, in private, when Geralt could not protect himself. 

“Two of our own, Dettlaff van der Eretein and Emiel Regis Rohellec Terzieff-Godefroy, have agreed to bond with this witcher,” the katakan indicated Geralt with one long clawed hand, “this Geralt of Rivia. In so doing, they join our peoples together: their blood to his blood, his kin to our clan. We invoke the law on his behalf:  _ let they who kill kin be held anathema. _ After tonight, the witchers and the humans they protect will be our kin, binding us to this world to which the Conjunction brought us.”

A murmur went through the crowd. Several remarks--made quietly, but still clearly audible to witcher ears--were of the opinion that no mortal deserved to be uplifted in such a way, much less some silver-wielding monster. They were quickly silenced. Another voice, however, remarked that this was rash, that when the Conjunction came again and they returned to their home world, binding themselves to mortals would complicate that.

Geralt wished the Conjunction would come here and now. He wished a portal would open between worlds and take all these beasts away before they trapped him with them forever. 

But it didn’t. Instead, Dettlaff lifted one of his wings to his mouth, cutting into his wrist with his teeth and creating a wound which first beaded and then began to seep blood. He held the wound out to Geralt. 

“Drink,” the officiant instructed. 

In the moment before Geralt bent to comply, many thoughts went through his head. He told himself that it was only blood. The blood of various creatures was a common ingredient in witcher brews and he had used them to great effect over the years. Compared to some ingredients, maybe fresh Deathless blood wasn’t so bad. He reminded himself, too, that the two Deathless were binding themselves to him, not him to them. Perhaps, then, he could even use this to his benefit in some way? 

But he didn’t believe it. With a sense that this was the end of everything he had ever known, just as the Trial of the Grasses had once been, Geralt bent and sealed his mouth over the wound. The blood pulsed over his tongue, metallic and salty just like his own, except--

For a moment, the dense miasma of vampire smells became  _ family, beloved, home. _ The comfort and pride of it were overwhelming, like falling suddenly from biting winter winds into hot water. 

Then it was gone, leaving Geralt with nothing but a tingling tongue. He was aware all over again of the cool night air around his thighs. 

Next came Regis, the diplomatic formality, who seemed much less technical and much more real when he also bit his wrist and offered it to Geralt. Suddenly feeling exhausted and overwhelmed by it all, Geralt leaned forward again. 

The skin pressed soft and wet against Geralt’s lips and he helplessly chased a trickle of blood with his tongue, feeling as though letting it go would be a horrible misstep. 

This time when he swallowed he was struck by a sudden shock of  _ shame, remorse, anger. _ Geralt’s own miserable smell grew even more potent in his nose, the acrid chemicals of his distress a sign of...failure?

The thought left him as quickly as it had come and he withdrew. He swallowed again and again, working his tongue against the roof of his mouth in an attempt to rasp the thick fluid from his tastebuds or force himself to produce more saliva to wash it away. 

“It is done,” the katakan announced. “You, witcher Geralt of Rivia, are of our blood now. As a member of the Gharasham Clan, it is your duty to protect and aid your new kin, just as it is our duty to protect and aid yours. One blood!”

“One blood!” the gathered vampires called out, and then it seemed to be done. The vampires began moving and talking again, and the officiant inclined his head to Geralt and walked away. 

Geralt lingered a moment, in case his new husbands had anything to say to him. Dettlaff rose onto his feet, spreading his wings. 

“I will be back before sunrise,” he said simply, and then with a powerful leap he was aloft. 

Regis sighed, the massive barrel of his chest expanding before his breath gusted over Geralt’s robes, stirring them. Regis’s big, glistening eyes closed briefly before he looked skyward, perhaps in the direction of his mate. 

When Geralt decided he’d had more than enough of being sober and went over to the table where the mandrake brew had come from, Regis followed. Other vampires moved out of their way. At the table, Geralt considered pouring himself another glass but instead just took the whole bottle. It burned just as beautifully on the second taste. 

Standing on his hind legs and turning his back to Geralt, Regis returned to his human shape. He re-donned his clothes, slipping into robes that, Geralt now realized, looked much like Geralt’s own. 

“For what little it may be worth to you now, you have my thanks,” Regis said as he re-tied his sash. “I realize it may not feel like it at this moment, but you have accomplished a great thing by coming here and doing this. Over the next centuries, thousands will owe their lives to you--thousands among  _ both _ our kinds.”

Geralt snorted. The thanks of a Deathless who now owned him and could do whatever he liked to Geralt meant less than nothing to him, though it was surprising to hear them offered at all. But then, some vampires played at love with their victims before killing them. Witchers had found treatises on blood flavor in one of the dungeons where humans had been kept, and the treatises stated that to some vampires, a fully relaxed human, especially an aroused one, produced the sweetest and strongest flavor of blood. The Deathless capacity to enthrall their victims had been used to great effect in achieving this quality of blood. 

Perhaps Regis had that particular palate. That would be more tolerable than the reverse, Geralt supposed, as some vampires preferred their prey miserable and terrified. In the descriptions Geralt had read, painstakingly translated from the vampires’ written script and language, agony and terror gave mortal blood a much sharper, sourer flavor profile, which some bloodsuckers enjoyed. But if Regis had a sweet tooth, so to speak, perhaps Geralt would merely have a quiet retirement being occasionally fucked and bled here in the countryside. Given that he had expected to die torn open on a Deathless’s claws on the battlefield, getting fucked by one while rotting away bored and lonely in an isolated estate wasn’t  _ so _ bad. Comparatively speaking, at least. 

Assuming the treaty was upheld in any real way and this hadn’t just been for show, at least Geralt’s misery would lead to better lives for  _ other _ people. That was all any witcher could ask from life. 

But Regis was still watching Geralt with a weather eye. When Geralt gave him a narrow stare in return, the vampire sighed again. 

“It is late,” Regis said quietly. “I don’t know how similar witchers are to most humans in terms of their circadian rhythms. Possibly you are tired at this hour? But regardless, I assume you will not wish to stay out here and socialize with people you have been extensively trained to see as the enemy. If you like, I can show you to your bedroom and you can sleep.”

Suspicious of this apparent gentility, Geralt nodded. He followed Regis’s short figure through the open doors that led into the house. 

Within the house it was almost pitch black. Just enough light coming in through the windows of open rooms for Geralt to see his way. Briefly Geralt wondered why there were no candles, torches, or lanterns, and then he realized: vampires had night-vision so fine that only a witcher with a dose of Cat in their system could match them. It was an advantage vampires had used often by attacking under cover of darkness, overwhelming any human troops right away and forcing witchers into high-toxicity states with the sheer number of potions they had to take to keep up. So in a vampire household, what use would they have for fire hazards that were only there to give light? Now that Geralt thought about it, assuming that this house had been built by humans and purchased by Dettlaff later, all the fireplaces in all the rooms would probably be clean and unused as well. Vampires were not as sensitive to cold, and thus had little use for hearths. 

Which meant that in the winter, if Geralt was still alive to see it, he would need to gather and chop his own firewood and hope his room had a fireplace. 

The vampire’s quiet footsteps led Geralt upstairs and through the cool, silent house, until finally they arrived at a place that smelled like it had seen a lot of traffic lately. Regis gestured Geralt into an east-facing bedroom. 

Here, as with nowhere else in the house, Geralt could make out by scent and sight several shapes he knew to be beeswax candles. With a small Igni, he lit one. 

The room was finely appointed, with a comfortable bed in which a pair of people, even witchers, could easily sleep. For a brief moment his chest clutched tight with how much he missed Eskel and Yen. 

But he put the thought away. Whether or not he ever saw another witcher again was out of his control now, and making himself maudlin with thoughts of them would change nothing. The more relevant detail right now was that the bed had heavy curtains and warm coverings upon it. 

“If you wish,” Regis said from the doorway, “we usually have breakfast--or dinner, to the katakans--together at around nine in the morning. You’re welcome to join us. But if that is not comfortable for you, I think you can find your own way down to the kitchen. The two who will be there in the morning have been told to expect you.” Regis nodded then at a large wardrobe on one wall. “Since I doubt you will wish to wear your ceremonial attire every day, especially now that they smell like that, new clothes are available for you. They were made to your measurements, as the robes were, but as they have not been fitted to you they may need some amendment. Tiorsale--one of the bruxae who lives here--is quite competent with a needle and can help you if you need. But for tonight,” Regis concluded, tapping his claws against the wood of the doorframe, “is there anything else you need?”

Geralt shook his head, anxious for the Deathless to be gone. When he looked over at the smaller figure, the flame of the single candle reflected in the back of Regis’s eyes. 

A chill went through Geralt at that. How many times had he seen that sight and been forced to fight for his life? How many times had he seen that and wound up with new scars and the bodies of more of his friends to burn?

For a moment Regis seemed to wait, as if making room for Geralt to say something. But Geralt had nothing he wished to communicate. So Regis bowed, wished Geralt a good night, and closed the door behind him. 

Standing frozen in the room, Geralt listened for retreating footsteps. None came. Which meant that either the Deathless was still standing right outside Geralt’s door, or he had turned himself into mist and retreated that way. 

For several minutes Geralt held still, hardly daring to breathe, before finally he crossed to the door and yanked it open. 

There was nothing in the hall outside. 


	2. Chapter 2

Despite the soft mattress and the fine fabric of the linens, Geralt slept uneasily that night. At first he fell into the shallow doze of an anxious mind. As he tossed and turned, he dreamed of wind rushing over his face and twining around his fingers as the forests and ocean moved far below him. And when he at last sank into a deeper slumber, his somnolent mind supplied the feeling of a person in the bed beside him. He buried his face in its dark hair, breathing deeply the familiar, beloved smell of the skin. 

When he awoke just after dawn, still exhausted, the awareness of how far away Eskel and Yen were cut into Geralt like claws. Would he ever see his friends again? 

Not wishing to spend a moment longer lying down and contemplating his grim future, Geralt rose. He yanked open the wardrobe. In it, he found a full array of clothing for all seasons, all of it in the Nazairi style of long tunics with breeches or leggings. 

The sight of those fine clothes waiting for him, clearly meant for him to wear for some time to come, evoked both dull relief and sharp distress; relief that his captors had planned for his continued life and did not immediately plan to kill him, and distress that they clearly did plan to keep him for at least a year. 

What was he to  _ do _ in the Nazairi countryside, surrounded by vampires?

Well, he supposed that he might discover that today. 

It was well before nine in the morning and Geralt had no desire to eat with his keepers anyway. So he went in search of the kitchen. 

Following his nose led him to it. In it, however, he also found another two vampires--a bruxa and a katakan in the middle of preparing food. When Geralt walked into the spacious kitchen and stopped short at the sight of them--neither of them had bothered to look human--the katakan’s ears curled back against her head and she gave a gusty sigh. 

“Regis said you’d be in,” she grimaced. “I’ll put together a tray for you. Then you can get out of our hair.”

Stumped by this response, which was somehow both exactly and not at all what he’d expected, Geralt stood uselessly in the doorway. He watched as the katakan gathered a jug of milk, another of small beer, one of yesterday’s mid-sized loaves, a small crock of butter and another of honey, several smoked fish, a hard cured sausage, a wedge of hard cheese, and a trio of fresh Nazairi peaches. With a scowl she held the tray out to him. 

“Is this enough?” she demanded. “We were told witchers eat a great deal.”

He couldn’t help but feel a prickle of fear having a huge katakan towering over him. She was at least a foot taller.

“It’s fine,” he said, mouth watering as he surveyed the spread. Then nearly a century of social training kicked in despite his knowledge that these were vampires, and he added, “Thank you.”

The katakan curled her lip at him and flounced away. He took both the tray and his cue to leave and got out. 

Not knowing where else to go, he took his breakfast back to his room and ate it seated at the desk there. As he ate, he spotted a letter-writing kit neatly squared away in the corner of the desk’s shelves. 

After he had eaten the whole loaf, the dried fish, the cheese, and one of the absurdly succulent peaches (Nazairi peaches were an expensive delicacy few witchers ever got to taste), he opened up the letter-writing kit. In it he found a ream of middling-quality paper, an inkwell, a screw-tip pen with a selection of replacement nibs, a blotter, salt--and lying atop it all, a small note. 

> _ I thought this might be of use to you until the negotiations have progressed and things aren’t so dangerous. I go to the market once a week on Thursdays, so I can either take your letters for you, or you can come with me and bring them yourself. The town is large enough that they have a courier service to the nearest city.  _
> 
> _ \- Regis _

For some time Geralt stared at the note. The impulse to first crumple it and then set fire to it rose and then lingered in his body until finally the smell of the cured sausage and the peaches reminded him of what he had been doing. He finished the sausage while hardly noticing what he was eating, but the incredible taste of the peaches made him close his eyes and slow down again, savoring each sweet, juicy mouthful. 

Sated on the fine meal, Geralt stared balefully at the note. What game was this vampire playing with him? Was this a test of his commitment to the surrender? Would his letters be intercepted and read for any signs of untrustworthiness? Or, far less likely, was this an  _ earnest _ gift?

The latter option was almost more overwhelming. It implied he was being  _ courted _ in some way. Which in turn implied that at some point they might wish to consummate this marriage or bonding or whatever it was to be called.

Geralt had dissected the amputated bodies of Deathless. They seemed to revert to their humanoid form when detached from the head, so while they did appear to have some sort of genitals, it was impossible to guess how they were used, or if those structures remained constant between forms. Their reproduction might be mundane and similar to that of most other sentient species, which would be almost tolerable assuming it wasn’t too rough. But some creatures laid eggs inside their prey so that the hatched young ate their way out of their still-living hosts. With his luck, Deathless would turn out to be like that. 

Well, only time would tell either way. And in the meantime, he might as well explore his diplomatic prison. Would he be allowed out onto the grounds? 

He found socks and boots waiting in the bottom of the wardrobe too. The fact that the boots fit him tolerably well only made him angrier. Yanking the socks on and then jerking the laces tight, Geralt stomped out into the hallway. 

No one stopped him at the door, so he strode out into the gardens. 

The grounds had been different a long time ago, that much was plain. Judging by the winding cobbled paths in one portion of the grounds, there had been a hedge maze once. Since then, however, the hedges had been torn up and fruit trees planted in their place, so instead of a maze there was a densely-packed little orchard. By the look of the trees, whose branches tangled in amongst each other, they were at least three decades old. 

As Geralt walked the jumbled cobbles, pushed up from beneath by roots, he recognized apricots, peaches, plums, and apples. Along the east wall were almond trees, and in the northeastern corner were figs, oranges, and lemons. In the North those were considered exotic fruits, rare and costly, and thus Geralt had only rarely seen them. Yet the few times he had encountered them, the smell of them had been so captivating that they had stuck in his mind and were thus immediately recognizable. 

Along the walls of the estate, meanwhile, were hosts and hosts of mandrake roots, blooming and releasing their strange, rich scent. Seeing the great numbers of them, Geralt realized that the mandrake liquor he’d drunk the night before was probably brewed here on the estate. He went over to them, nudging at the dirt with one foot and then kneeling to sniff, but he couldn't detect any charnel smell. Perhaps they weren't nourished with corpses, then.

The northernmost portion of the grounds were the herb and vegetable gardens. The plot for the herbs was extensive. There were all the herbs one might expect to use in a kitchen--rosemary, thyme, mint, sage, and a host of others--and all the herbs one would expect an alchemist to have too. Ranogrin, ginatia, celandine, bisongrass, and a shocking selection of others, neatly-tended and growing beautifully. 

Around the alchemical herbs were set up small stones of power, just like the ones used in Kaer Morhen’s greenhouse to regulate temperature. Which meant that the garden here was designed to grow and be harvestable year-round. 

Geralt stared at the herbs and the stones. They meant something, but he didn’t know what. Was one of the vampires an alchemist? If so, then  _ why? _ What use would a vampire have for alchemy? They were immune to human diseases just as witchers were, and were not subject to the ailments that went with aging, either. Even presupposing they used herbal remedies for pregnancy prevention or something similar, surely they would not need such variety. 

The vegetable garden, meanwhile, was clearly meant to supply the household. A selection of seasonal vegetables sprawled together in varying stages of ripeness. 

Now uneasy, Geralt circled around to the west side of the house. The high walls that surrounded the estate meandered along the cliff face there, except for where Geralt found a small wooden gate. The gate bore no lock. Opening the door, he found a long path carved into the rock face and winding its way down the cliff to the shore. 

When he’d gotten to the bottom, he found a short pier, complete with a little shed of fishing equipment and a two-person boat with oars. This was where the dried fish in his breakfast had come from, he supposed. 

Climbing all the way back up the path to the estate left even Geralt out of breath, but he continued his exploration of the grounds. Along the west side of the house was a small stable, fit to contain three beasts. In it stood a large and sturdy workhorse in good health, and given the cart stored nearby, Geralt could guess the beast’s purpose. This must be how Regis went to and from the market, presumably to purchase the household’s goods. 

That seemed so impossibly mundane that other explanations sprang to mind, like using the horse as a source of blood. But the horse bore no marks or scars, and Regis could not carry supplies to and from the house while in his winged or mist forms. So a more human means of transportation  _ would _ be necessary. 

With reconnaissance performed on the grounds, Geralt returned indoors. He supposed he could run away, just walk out the gates and go, but what would be the point? They could track him, and his purpose in being here was political. He  _ couldn’t _ just leave. Short of immediate threat of death, he wouldn’t. 

So he explored the house. He quickly found that one wing of it was closed off. Curiously, the handles of the double doors leading to the wing were not locked, merely tied closed with a short rope knotted well. Opening it was the work of a moment. A small part of him expected this to be where the bodies went, but his nose told him otherwise from the moment he set foot in the wing. When he explored, there was nothing but what his nose said he’d find: dust. The rooms contained only sheet-covered furniture, much of it centuries old and quite worn, probably left over from the original occupants. Dettlaff must have thought it wasteful to just throw away, so instead he’d jumbled it together in the rooms here. 

After sealing up the wing behind him, Geralt explored the rest of the house. He soon found a magnificent library containing what looked like several thousand books. Geralt had rarely seen repositories this size outside palaces--and in Kaer Morhen before it had been sacked. The curious thing about the library was that someone seemed to have begun to organize it several different ways only to give up on each method. One portion held books alphabetized by titles from A to L, another section contained books organized by topic, and a third was organized alphabetically in order of author name. Gaps in the shelves, along with books which had slumped into these gaps, demarcated each attempt. After these three attempts, the unnamed organizer had seemingly given up, as a great many more books were stacked at the foot of the shelves, on every small end-table at the borders of the room, portions of the large worktable in the middle of the room, and on some of the chairs. 

When Geralt selected a few volumes of interest (three novels and a bestiary he had never read before, detailing creatures from behind the Blue Mountains) and leafed through them, he quickly discovered that Regis (judging by the handwriting, which Geralt recognized from the note in his letter kit) had made significant annotations in the margins of most of the books, including even the novels. Flicking through one such book, a rather saucy romance that Eskel had brought a copy of to Kaer Morhen a decade ago, Geralt found the comment,  _ ‘Why do they inevitably pick the activity that carries risk of pregnancy, and do it in the way that creates maximum risk? Of all the possibilities, why is it always this every time?’ _

Geralt stared at the remark. He had asked himself the same question many times through the decades as he watched humans over and over again get themselves into trouble by choosing the one sex act that would most often leave permanent consequences. Seeing a thought which Geralt himself had had, jotted into the margin of a book he had read together with his fellow witchers, in a scrawling script written by a vampire, made Geralt feel something. He didn’t know what. 

He closed the book again and went to explore the rest of the house. When he heard footsteps or voices, he avoided those rooms. Nobody came to stop him from exploring, though he knew that the vampires he was avoiding could hear him moving through the house. 

When he discovered the wine cellar, he also discovered where the lesser vampires went during the day. At the sight of them heaped together in the darkness, Geralt reflexively cast Quen, shielding himself from what he was certain would be an immediate attack. 

But of the six lesser vampires, only two of them even bothered lifting their heads to blink sleepily at him. The garkain in particular gave him an unimpressed, peevish look before huffing a long-suffering sigh and burying its face in the ruff of a nearby ekkimara. One of the fleders mustered a half-hearted growl of protest at Geralt’s presence, but after a tense moment in which Geralt readied himself to sprint back up the stairs, even that vampire subsided back into what Geralt now noticed was a nest of blankets and pillows. The fleder kept its eyes open and on him, but it did nothing else. 

At this astonishing display of nonviolence, which Geralt was sure no witcher had ever encountered from any lesser vampire before, Geralt stood frozen in shock. Part of him  _ wanted _ the violence; if he was killed here by lesser vampires, it would keep him from suffering whatever Dettlaff and Regis had in mind for him later. So he stood, heart pounding, barely breathing, until finally, several minutes later, he had to accept that the vampires weren’t going to do anything. 

Sweaty-palmed and sticky inside his clothes, Geralt crept past the heap of vampires and deeper into the cellars. Would this provoke them, he wondered? Apparently not, as they still did nothing. 

Further in he found a moonshine still smelling strongly of mandrake, so he supposed this was where the very fine mandrake liquor was made. Indeed, the room contained an entire alchemical laboratory such as any witcher would enjoy using. It wasn’t the finest set he’d ever seen, but it was plenty good enough. 

An herb garden containing medicinal herbs, and now clear evidence of alchemy. The bottles and burners were clean, free of dust and grime, and obviously attended to regularly. But  _ why? _

When he passed back through the main room of the wine cellar again, Quen still in place around him, this time the fleder didn’t even bother to open its eyes. Geralt found this insulting. Sure, he was unarmed and it would have been six against one, but still. Couldn’t they smell that he was a witcher? Or would these lesser vampires have even encountered a witcher before, if they were the pets of a Deathless? Possibly not. Possibly they just didn’t know to fear witchers. 

For lack of anything else to do, Geralt spent the rest of the day in the library. By the time he was well and truly hungry around sunset, when he sat up from his book to go in search of food, he caught himself thinking that he should go find Lambert for an evening of drinking--only to remember that this wasn’t Kaer Morhen over the winter, it was the Nazairi estate of two Deathless. Where he was trapped. 

A sick pang of fury and sadness went through him. Lambert was difficult company at the best of times, but now...Geralt wanted his biting sarcasm. Geralt wanted someone to complain to who’d either mock him for his whining or complain right back even louder. 

Now angry  _ and _ hungry at the same time, Geralt followed his nose again--this time to what was clearly the dining room, where the household was eating dinner. Or breakfast, for the nocturnal katakans, he supposed. Geralt had avoided seeing any vampires since the two in the kitchen, but now he sought them out. If he was to be kept here like a beast in a cage, he wanted to see his captors. 

The hum of voices and the scent of vampire musk mixed with food led him straight to them. The room was dark, again lit with no candles or lamps as any human habitation would be, but thanks to the high windows along one wall, Geralt could see well enough. 

No less than ten vampires were gathered there, seated around a long rectangular table. Scanning the faces, Geralt recognized Regis and the bruxa and the katakan from the kitchens, but the others were unfamiliar. 

At Regis’s side at the head of the table was a strikingly handsome vampire in human form. A tall man with pale skin and dark hair, he sat up a little straighter at the sight of Geralt and gave him a nod of acknowledgement--which was when Geralt belatedly realized that it was  _ Dettlaff. _ Geralt recognized the shocking pale blue eyes, though when he had last seen them, they’d been in an animalistic, monstrous face, and the dark hair had been covering a good deal more of Dettlaff’s body. 

Regis stood up, smiling and gesturing to an empty seat at Dettlaff’s other side. 

“Welcome,” Regis said. “We had hoped you’d join us. We sat down only a few minutes ago.”

Cautiously, Geralt took the offered seat. Two alps further down the table murmured something to one another in their own tongue, and Regis told them sharply, “In Nordling or not at all, please. You are being very rude.”

Abashed, one of the alps murmured a ‘sorry’. She then stuffed her mouth with food, seeming embarrassed. 

“Let me introduce everyone,” Regis said, and then listed the names and duties of the others at the table. There were the bruxa and katakan who did the household cooking. There was an alp, whom Regis had mentioned the night before as being good with a needle, who also took care of the horse and fished every few days. A pair of katakans tended to the gardens and also the local deer population, which was apparently what the lesser vampires fed upon. Another alp did the laundry and much of the cleaning, while the last person was what Geralt suspected was a gangly teenaged katakan with a dramatic facial scar who was being educated. 

“Betta, pass the potatoes if you please--Geralt, I trust your day went well?” Regis inquired after the introductions. “We did not see you at breakfast or lunch.”

Was that a reproach, or just intended as a sign that his movements were being watched? Geralt as unsure. He said nothing. 

Regis seemed to take his silence as a sign that he needed to supply the conversation for both of them. So he launched into a description of his plans to visit the town later in the week. 

“Normally I go every Thursday unless I am called before then. If you wish to accompany me, I would welcome your presence. We can purchase any supplies you need which we didn’t anticipate.”

“‘Called’?” Geralt asked, too curious to let the word go unremarked. 

“Oh, called out to the town. They have a leech there--ironic, that the human is referred to that way while I am not--but it’s widely known that he is a charlatan and a lecher, so I expect he will soon move on. Whereas I am a barber-surgeon with a much better record of actually helping my patients.” He smiled as he said it, an expression of quiet pride.

When Geralt narrowed his eyes at this, however--a vampire being a human surgeon sounded like the start of a sordid tale of misery and woe if he’d ever heard one--Regis merely sighed. 

“I am aware of how it sounds,” he said, setting down his utensils before resting his wrists on the edge of the table to either side of his plate. “But the truth is that I have sworn not to drink blood--I have not drunk it in more than five decades now.” Dettlaff’s shoulder moved as if he were laying a hand on Regis’s thigh under the table. Regis looked at the other vampire with a brief but grateful expression. “In the past I struggled with an addiction to it, and the only solution I have found is to remain completely sober. Thirty years ago I took up surgery as a challenge to myself, to see if I could manage to maintain my sobriety when exposed to the substance I had craved for so long. It turns out I can! Having a task to focus my attention upon is very useful that way. Now, please do try the potatoes, they are delicious. Full of garlic and butter.”

In the silence that followed, Geralt did serve himself some of the offered food, mostly in self-defense. But the frankly horrific notion of a vampire using surgeries as a way to test his resolve sank like a rock into his stomach and lessened his appetite. 

“So, I may well be called out of the house sooner,” Regis continued. He mostly kept his gaze upon his plate as he cut his food, but sometimes he cast brief glances at Geralt as though gauging his reaction. “There are no less than three women in town who are in the final stages of pregnancy, and while the midwives are very competent women, it has sometimes been useful having me to hand if something goes seriously wrong.” His eyes lifted to the ceiling for a moment, as though mentally going through a list. “There is also the cobbler, who has a large wound as a result of doing something really inadvisable to himself. He is not helping matters by repeatedly picking at the stitches I put in him. He is a very fine shoemaker and generally a kind person, but the man is rather mentally unsettled. His father, who lives with him, is not a good man.” 

Further down the table, one of the bruxa remarked, “Now there’s an understatement.”

Regis went on as though he hadn’t been interrupted. “He may be making his son worse. I should speak to the neighbors about it when I visit this week, in fact.”

“Why not just enthrall the father? Force him to stop doing what he’s doing?” Geralt asked, curious to see what Regis would say. 

At this question Regis stopped with his fork halfway to his mouth. After a moment, he closed his mouth and set the fork on the edge of his plate to regard Geralt. So did most of the other vampires at the table. 

“Because enthrallment is a violation of free will,” Regis said bluntly. “There is no need for me to take such extreme action when a conversation with the neighbors may suffice.” 

Geralt narrowed his eyes. “And if it does not suffice?”

Regis held Geralt’s gaze. “Then I will speak to the mayor and see about moving the cobbler’s father away from his son. The mayor and I are on very good terms.”

“How do they not know you’re vampires?” Geralt burst out then. Regis’s dark eyes and Dettlaff’s pale ones both gave him an unreadable look. “It’s clear you’ve lived here for some time. How have they not guessed? Have they not seen that you don’t  _ age?” _

Regis seemed to think about this for a moment. Dettlaff’s nostrils flared. The other vampires at the table were watching this like a boxing match, the katakan from the kitchen glaring furiously at Geralt.

“The townsfolk are well aware of what we are, even if they have never seen us in anything but our human forms,” Regis answered. “Dettlaff has lived here for more than a century now and it has not escaped anyone’s notice that since he took up residence, there have been no monster attacks of any kind. While Dettlaff himself almost never goes into town, I do and some of the others do as well.” Regis gave a tight smile. “We live quietly here and I provide good doctoring, and our fruit and preserves are very high quality and much-loved in town." 

An awkward look came into Regis's face then, and Geralt's eyes narrowed in anticipation of what would be said next. 

"The locals here seem to have taken to a very peculiar belief that vampirism is a degenerative condition worsened by poor conditions,” Regis said awkwardly. “As a result, they seem to think that I will be embarrassed if they refer to it directly. Among other things, I have heard it referred to as ‘my delicate condition,’ which makes me sound pregnant. The rest of the time, they tell me that the fine climate here must be doing me wonders, not like those mad people further inland and north.”

Geralt stared. Was he being mocked? Something in his gut pulled tight and started to hurt, low along one of his hips. He could barely breathe. 

“Ah, I understand,” he snarled. “It’s a _joke_ to you that witchers and human armies are dying with their guts torn out by your kin! You’re just a happy family living peaceful lives out here in your pretty house eating quaint dinners with clean hands!”

The gangly young-looking katakan with the dramatic scar subsided in his seat, ears flattening against his head. Along the table, several vampires drew sharp breaths as if to begin arguing. Regis sent them a quelling look with a small shake of his head. Then he looked back at Geralt. 

“You are right that it is unfair,” he acknowledged. “But I am not mocking you. The treaty that was offered and the fact that it was to culminate here at our estate are infamous by now. Do you imagine we have somehow managed to keep our species a _secret_ from everyone nearby despite that?” 

That...was a fair point, but Geralt wasn’t going to concede it. “So am I to somehow believe that you  _ haven’t _ enthralled the locals, despite the fact that vampire wars have destroyed every northern nation but theirs and they have vampires living in their midst? That just makes it sound as if you have brought me here tonight to bleed me for dessert!”

One of the vampires further down the table snorted, rolling their eyes, but Regis only inclined his head in acknowledgement of Geralt’s words. 

“Nobody here will drink from you without your express consent,” he stated. “And since you do not seem the sort to give such permission, perhaps it is easier to just say that nobody will drink from you.”

A silence fell for some time after this. Geralt sat with his hands clenched beside his plate, feeling the crawling gaze of inhuman eyes upon him. Finally the bruxa from the kitchen started a conversation with the katakan beside her about the latest gossip in town, which was that it had just been revealed that the alderman’s daughter had been scandalously engaged to the son of the lord from a nearby estate for six months now and nobody had known about it. This prompted a lot of discussion about how she had managed to hide such a thing. Regis joined in with a theory that they had been exchanging letters, which everyone else thought ridiculous given the young woman involved, but which Regis staunchly defended. 

At first Geralt ate mechanically, simply because he had been too well-trained not to refuse food he didn’t have to pay for. Eventually his stomach remembered itself and supplied him again with the feeling of being hungry, so Geralt tried to ignore the vampires and look only at his plate. 

When Geralt had almost eaten his fill, however, he heard small padded footsteps trotting down the corridor. Dettlaff let out a startling chirping noise, like a cat disturbed in its rest, and two baby katakans rushed into the room. 

Geralt had never seen katakans at this age before, having only encountered adults on the battlefield, or before that, on contracts. But he knew immediately upon seeing them that they had to be very young. They were only knee-high, and while most katakans had a ruff of fur that went all the way around their necks and sometimes spread down their backs as well, these two pups had a full coat from knees to elbows. It made them look like little brown puffballs, and their horns were only nubbins at the tops of their foreheads. 

Unlike human infants, they were clearly very mobile, their little paws slapping on the hardwood as they ran straight to Dettlaff, who pushed his chair back and let them climb up onto his lap. The shrilling of their eager voices cut through the conversation as they tugged at his clothes. 

To Geralt’s surprise, Dettlaff sighed, looking put-upon, and then unbuttoned his tunic and pushed it down over one shoulder. Both the baby katakans fixed their mouths at once upon his bared skin, one at his collarbone and the other at the top of his arm, clearly nursing from his blood. 

Upon seeing Geralt’s astonished stare, Regis explained, “They’re more than capable of hunting for themselves, and given that we have rabbits and moles infesting the gardens, they should just be eating those. Most of the time they do, supplemented with any mice that get into the pantry. But Dettlaff has gotten into the habit of letting them nurse from him sometimes, too. He spoils them rotten,” Regis said, smiling at Dettlaff with no real censure in his voice.

“It will make them stronger,” Dettlaff said, leaning his head against the high wooden back of his chair. 

With heroic effort Geralt managed to control his face. Even if he had known how to respond to this, he had already invited enough trouble tonight by being so confrontational. So he merely finished his meal, watching as the young creatures seemed to grow satisfied, withdrawing their ugly little faces from Dettlaff and subsiding into purring lumps against his belly and chest. The wounds they had made on him healed immediately, sealing as Geralt watched and leaving behind unblemished skin with only small smears of blood upon it. Dettlaff, who had finished eating already, sat holding the little ones with his eyes closed in what looked like perfect relaxation. 

Dimly Geralt felt a kind of anger. He was one of the greatest fighters among his kind, and yet nothing about this whole meal implied any of them felt the least bit threatened by anything about him except, possibly, the social awkwardness he brought. True, he was much less of a threat without his silver sword, but  _ this? _ Dettlaff napping at the dinner table with the infants? For the household to allow Geralt around their young in this way implied they saw him as  _ no _ danger whatsoever. 

At last full, Geralt retreated to his room. Once there, the crawling fury that had kept his fists clenched the whole way here overtook him. He stood shaking with rage. 

He wanted to break the furniture, to fling the heavy wood and metal against the walls until it shattered. As if that would somehow show his captors that he was not to be underestimated--as if it would imply anything other than that he was a petulant fool who couldn’t control himself. He wanted a sword to behead every last one of them. If he could find a silver blade, if he crept up on then while they slept, perhaps he could--

He could do nothing, he reminded himself. He was here as the peace offering of a defeated people. Even if he could somehow destroy every vampire in this whole household, which he doubted, it would only restart the violence elsewhere. Assuming it had even been stopped at all by his coming here. 

Grimacing, Geralt knelt and forced himself into meditation. He slowed his heartbeat, measuring his breaths, and waited patiently until the anger cooled and left only numb resignation in its place yet again. 

He slept deeply that night, perhaps out of desperation to escape for a little while. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As with everybody else in this fandom who has written about baby katakans, I got the idea from [VelvettoDraws’ incredible fanarts](https://velvettodraws.tumblr.com/tagged/katakan)


	3. Chapter 3

The next day, determined to further test the limits of his cage, he got breakfast from the kitchens and then marched right out toward the gates. If any vampires were watching him, then let them watch, he thought. If they wanted to stop him, then let them try!

Once outside of the grounds, however, he relaxed a little. He was unfamiliar with Nazairi woods, as the southern kingdoms were normally the domain of the Griffons and Vipers rather than the Wolves, but he knew how such forests worked. Without his swords he could not go looking for a fight, but he could at least do reconnaissance. See what sorts of monsters lived here other than the vampires themselves. 

But as dusk neared and even Geralt’s legs tired from a full day of walking up and down the hilly country here, Geralt concluded that there were no monsters in the whole area. He could detect no trace of anything larger or worse than deer--not even bears or wolves or boars. In a forest this deep and old he would expect chorts or fiends and at least one leshen. Arachas and endrega too, definitely, and given how far south they were, giant centipedes as well. Yet there was nothing. Not even the old traces of anything. 

He arrived back at the estate just in time for the tail-end of dinner, seating himself among the vampires without saying a word. When the sharpest pangs of his hunger were sated, he laid the edges of his wrists on the table and asked, with carefully chosen words, “Why are there no monsters in your forest?”

This got Dettlaff’s attention, and that pale gaze rested on Geralt for several seconds before Dettlaff looked away again. He did not seem angry or even very surprised.

“Because we killed them,” he said simply, in his softly-accented Nordling. Given that he sounded as if he had learned the language in Nazair, Geralt wondered how long the vampire had lived here. “This is our territory. Monsters such as a witcher would fight would endanger the humans, and they are under our care. Further, other predators would eat the deer, and that is what we eat unless we want other kinds of meat from the butcher in town.”

_ ‘Other predators.’ _ Geralt had known, of course, that Deathless vampires were apex predators. But to hear Dettlaff himself acknowledge it, even obliquely, sent a chill down Geralt’s spine. 

Even beyond that, the knowledge that this little household could easily maintain territory in an area of the world where normally a whole host of monsters would thrive...that further drove home that Dettlaff and Regis and their pack of other vampire species feared nothing, least of all Geralt himself. One witcher, alone and unbladed, was nothing to them.

Perhaps that explained why he had gotten no reaction for disclosing that he had left the grounds and wandered in the woods. Even with his great skill in evading various monsters, vampires included, Geralt knew he was no match for a pair of Deathless. A Witcher’s nose was a very sensitive organ, but that of a Deathless was another thing altogether. So perhaps they just had no fear of him running away; no matter where he went they would be able to find him. 

Just when he rose from his seat, however, Dettlaff held up a hand and met Geralt’s eyes. 

“Please bathe,” Dettlaff said bluntly. “I would prefer every day. The scent of your misery in the halls is very unpleasant.”

Geralt felt his own nostrils flare as his lips pinched together. 

“Forgive me, my liege,” he snapped, “for not ensuring that my misery smells better.”

Dettlaff stared at Geralt for a long moment, and just as Geralt was about to turn and leave, Regis laid a hand on Dettlaff’s arm. Dettlaff looked at Regis with a confused expression. 

“You’re being rude,” Regis said quietly to Dettlaff, and Geralt blinked. He hadn’t expected Regis to take his side in this. “Your phrasing implies that you care more about not having to  _ smell _ his misery than the fact that he’s miserable.”

“That isn’t what I meant, or what I said,” Dettlaff protested, sounding genuinely distressed by this. 

“True, but look at him,” Regis gestured at Geralt, who was still scowling. “That is how you’ve come across.”

Dettlaff looked back at Geralt, who was still scowling furiously, and sighed. The other vampires at the table were watching this interaction with interest. 

Dettlaff sighed. “I apologize, Geralt. I did not mean to hurt your feelings. I meant that you will eventually come to understand that it is better here than where you were before, and in the meantime I would appreciate it if you washed.”

“Um,” Regis said, even before Geralt spun on his heel and marched out. 

He went straight to his room, purposely keeping his hands planted on his waist so the scent of his armpits and body would waft more. 

When he arrived, the impulse to destroy the room arose again. But as he stood there, contemplating scent-marking something ostentatious so his unhappiness would be as unavoidable for his hosts as possible, he realized that doing so would mean  _ he _ had to go on smelling himself, too. 

Geralt hated his own smell, no matter his mental state. Ever since the Trial of the Grasses he had smelled wrong to himself in some undefinable but terrible way. Eskel and other witchers had never agreed with Geralt on this; Eskel agreed Geralt’s smell was  _ different _ after the second round of mutagens, but disagreed that it was inherently disgusting as Geralt found it to be. 

So if Geralt refused to wash, or rubbed his scent on places the vampires would encounter it, Geralt would also be unable to avoid it. And that was intolerable no matter how much he yearned to protest in whatever little ways he could. 

_ You will eventually come to understand that it is better here than where you were before. _ The words repeated themselves over and over in Geralt’s mind. Did that mean if Dettlaff did not perceive improvement in Geralt’s attitude, that Dettlaff meant to enthrall him and  _ force _ him to be at ease here? Regis had spoken out against the idea of enthralling people unnecessarily, but what if they considered subduing their unwanted captive a necessity? 

Well. No matter what Dettlaff had meant, he wasn’t actually wrong about how much Geralt stank. Now more keenly aware of it than ever, Geralt’s dinner sat like a stone in his belly. 

He had found the bathing chambers in his first exploration. They did not have the most modern plumbing he had encountered in the houses of some of the wealthy, but they did feature several huge wooden tubs with their own water pumps in the room itself. That was more than many houses had. 

Grimly Geralt went to the room and bathed, hating that Dettlaff would doubtless interpret this as obedience. 

When Geralt returned to his room, he immediately smelled that someone else had been there. His eyes narrowed and he drew a deep breath, tracing where the scent originated--until he realized that the intruder was still in the room. 

Perched on his bed, half-hidden behind one of the canopy curtains, was one of the baby katakans, peering at him with one of its wide-set black eyes. Its eyes were set so far on the sides of its head that it could only look at him with one at a time, rather like a horse or a goat. 

Seeing that it had been found, it chittered at him, reaching its hands toward him as though asking to be picked up. 

“I’m not putting any part of me within range of your teeth,” he told it firmly, but this only seemed to upset it. It chittered louder. 

Geralt peered out the door into the hall, worried one of the adult vampires would hear an unhappy pup in his room and assume he was harming it in some way. But there was no one there. Or at least, no one visible--in a house of vampires, not being able to see anyone meant little. 

When the fluffy pup’s cries only grew more and more insistent, finally Geralt reached down with quick hands and grabbed it around the middle. 

At the first contact with its tiny body, Geralt nearly keeled over from the force of the psychic pathway the touch opened. Distantly, under the overwhelming flood of outraged baby suddenly in his mind, he realized that while adult katakans were capable of telepathy at distances, infants like this probably required touch in order to communicate. 

He sat down right where he stood and then subsided dizzily against the side of the bed. When the pup demanded to be held closer to him, he responded automatically, bringing it to his chest. 

Once there it huffed at him, clearly dismayed that it had taken so much effort to get such a simple request met. Geralt stared down at it, head still spinning. 

_ Clever, _ he thought at it. Clever that even at this size, even without its powers fully formed yet, it could protect itself from anything that touched it. 

“Just don’t bite me,” Geralt told it, and tried to visualize a clear mental image. But it was hard to think straight, and harder still to visualize a negative. Maybe he was just no good at communicating this way, or maybe the connection only went one direction, because it did not seem to respond to or acknowledge the request. 

Nonetheless, it did not bite him. Instead it quickly subsided against him and went to sleep. 

Geralt stared at its little scrunched face. What he could see of it, at least, with most of it pressed into his shirt.

It was a damned ugly beastie, rather like those inbred smash-faced lapdogs that some nobles kept just for companionship. It didn’t have the good fortune human babies had of being fat and round--while its poof of fur approximated that on its torso, its spindly little arms and legs weren’t endearing. One of its heel-spurs (though really it was more of a heel-nub at this age) was digging into the knuckle of the hand Geralt had cupped under its bottom, and an elbow-spur dug into the base of his thumb on the other hand. 

Geralt startled a little out of the half-doze he’d fallen into when its stubby tail wiggled against his fingers. He hadn’t even seen the tail, hidden in its fur as it was, though of course he’d known the adults had them. 

Sleepily he thought about how many katakans he’d killed over the years. It had been many--the vampire forces, while few in number compared to that of their opponents, were chiefly made up of katakans. From what witchers had managed to glean over their centuries of work, of all the sapient vampire species, katakans reproduced the fastest, faster even than humans. Twins, as this little one seemed to be, were an unusually small litter for a katakan. The adults were huge, often standing well over seven feet tall, but their babies were clearly no larger than human, meaning they had room for a bunch at a go. And given that young katakan pups could probably survive on their own only a few days after birth...

The point was that Geralt killed a lot of them. They were powerful enemies. Their invisibility wasn’t as good as that of an alp or bruxa, and they couldn’t turn intangible like the Deathless. But an enemy that fast and strong who could look exactly like a normal human  _ and _ speak into your mind  _ and _ become transparent was very dangerous. Many humans and witchers had fallen to katakan teeth and claws. 

But not to this one, Geralt thought dimly about the warm little bundle on his sternum. At least not yet. 

**

When he woke some time later, the katakan was gone, leaving only a smattering of brown hairs on Geralt’s shirt. Had it hypnotized him into sleep? It was quite possible that it had, in pursuit of its own warm, stable place to rest. 

Geralt estimated that it was past midnight now. Uncertain what else to do, and with his back aching from slumping partially upright for several hours, Geralt laid himself out in the fine bed and went back to dreaming. 


	4. Chapter 4

The next day was a Thursday, which meant market day. Geralt did not particularly fancy the idea of a cart ride with a Deathless, but he did want to see how the townsfolk reacted to Regis. Given how long the vampires had apparently lived here, the reaction of the locals would tell Geralt a great deal. Would they be deferential? Would they smell of fear or disgust like most humans did around Geralt himself?

Unsure how else to find Regis in the large household--there were several bedrooms in use, but Geralt hadn’t dared look into any of them to determine which was the master suite, and the house smelled so thickly of vampire that he couldn’t yet track any individual by scent--Geralt attended the family breakfast. 

It was a smaller gathering than dinner, just the two cooks and Dettlaff and Regis. But Regis greeted Geralt with apparent pleasure. 

“Ah! Can I take your presence this morning as a sign you wish to join me in town today?”

Geralt nodded grimly. 

Once he’d eaten his fill, Geralt followed Regis in cautious silence down to the stable. He helped hitch the horse to the cart and then seated himself beside the vampire on the front of it. 

It wasn’t a large cart. They had to sit uncomfortably close, so that their shoulders touched as they rode. When either of them shifted, their thighs touched. Geralt considered getting down and walking, or sitting in the cart’s bed in the back, but he refused to be cowed so he held his ground. 

As the cart trundled out the gates and down the road, the only noises were the jingling of the harness, the crunch of the wheels, and birdsong in the trees. Geralt almost started to think he might be blessed with a peaceful trip when Regis sighed, shifting his grip on the reins as though uncomfortable. 

“Look, I’m sorry about last night,” he said. Geralt narrowed his eyes but did not turn or in any other way acknowledge the words. “I promise that Dettlaff means well. But he is a vampire very much in the style of our forebears from the old world, meaning he speaks plainly and expects that if you dislike what he says then you will tell him in terms just as blunt. Human society, with its myriad unspoken rules and implications, suits him very ill.” The vampire shook his head, as though thinking of something sweetly amusing. “It was a great labor to get him to wear human clothing everyday in anticipation of your arrival, and before that, to tolerate wearing shoes when he ventured into public. When I first met him, three hundred years ago, he looked like a beggar, barefoot and wearing little more than a ragged cloak.”

If Regis was hoping for a reaction, he didn’t get it. Geralt figured that the easiest way to discourage Regis from talking to him was to simply not respond. Regis did indeed seem to be waiting for something--for Geralt to relent in some way or say that it was all right, presumably. 

But it wasn’t all right. Geralt said nothing. 

Rather than being discouraged, however, Regis eventually seemed to decide that he had discharged his responsibility to defend his mate’s failings. Regis nodded, as if something had been settled between them (nothing had been settled), and then proceeded to prattle on despite the absence of response. He began with whose the pups were (the katakan in the kitchen, Caileis, who had dallied with a vampire who had visited Dettlaff last year), how Caileis was not very maternal, and thus how Dettlaff himself had taken over rearing the pups as he very much enjoyed the company of children. 

Geralt wouldn’t have called them children, but he didn’t argue the term, because he wasn’t going to argue anything.

By the time the forest had turned into farmland, Regis had gone on to discuss how he anticipated the end of the war to go. At this, Geralt’s ears pricked up, his attention sharpening even if he gave no outward sign. 

“If I think of timelines...the summit at which this solution was proposed and grudgingly accepted was in May. Dettlaff and I were, of course, always the only choice for who would bond with a mortal, given who Dettlaff is, my role in arguing for this solution, and the stability of our household.”

Geralt made special note of _'_ _ my role in arguing for this solution.' _ He had not realized that Regis had played any significant part in the negotiations--though what Regis meant by this was unclear. His role could have been anything from being the primary negotiator to having mentioned the idea once to a more politically significant vampire.

“A second summit was held in June, in which Dettlaff and I discussed with the others which specific individual among your side would be suitable as our spouse. Many names were put forth as options, you know, everyone from the Duchess of Toussaint to the Hierarch of the Church of the Eternal Flame.” He shook his head, letting out a whistling noise from between his front teeth. Geralt took this to mean that Regis felt relieved they had not gone that route. “But since selecting someone like the Duchess would only further disrupt international politics, we selected from among witchers instead. Once we had reached that point, arguments of both who would be suitably emblematic as well as who might be suited to us in terms of personality were also considered, and that is how you were chosen.” Regis waved a hand to indicate all of Geralt. “You, the famous White Wolf, have gained infamy among my kin from your actions during the war. But that’s not why you were chosen--one of our informants mentioned that you had been known for many decades to be friendly to nonhumans. You soon became the obvious choice.” Regis gave Geralt what Regis probably thought was a conspiratorial smile. “That you are pleasing to look at has merely been a fortunate happenstance.”

Geralt’s entire mind screeched to a halt. What possible traits could he have that a vampire would find attractive? He knew Yennefer liked his muscles and his cock and the way that his white hair complemented her black hair. But a witcher’s muscles meant nothing to a vampire who could tear a witcher in half with little effort, and Geralt did not want to think of his cock being relevant to Regis at all. Images of his erection being bitten and bled flooded Geralt’s mind and left him nauseated. 

He kept himself even more studiously still and unresponsive. Maybe if he pretended to have no reaction at all to the compliment, it wouldn’t be repeated. He was already treated poorly enough for the obviously-witcher aspects of his body without having them praised by a  _ godsdamned vampire. _

Perhaps something in his nonreaction implied distress to Regis, however, or maybe it was something in Geralt’s smell, because Regis sighed, subsiding. He shuffled his thigh away from Geralt’s and leaned a little further to the other side. 

“I shouldn’t tease, I’m sorry,” he said, actually sounding contrite. “I know you cannot possibly be interested. It's just the bond.”

_ What, _ Geralt thought. 

“What,” he said. 

“The bond?” Regis said, seeming confused. “I do apologize for my presumption, it’s just that the bond can be...intrusive sometimes.”

“What,” Geralt repeated.

At this, Regis turned to peer at Geralt. This time Geralt actually looked back. 

“Where have I lost you?” Regis asked at last. 

_ “What _ about the bond?” Geralt growled. 

It was now Regis’s turn to squint in confusion. 

“Did no one explain this to you?” he asked, and Geralt half-wondered if Regis was speaking to himself. A moment later this seemed to be the case when Regis sighed and answered his own question. “When would they have explained it, I suppose. Blast, I am sorry. It’s--hmm. Give me a moment to find the words in Nordling.”

Staring out over the horizon of grass and fences and cows, Geralt wondered what other apparently-vital information hadn’t been given to him when he had received the command to do this.

“In vampiric culture, bonding as we have done--Dettlaff and I giving you our blood, without you giving us yours--can be a symbol of allegiance, of fealty. When you owe someone a great debt you cannot repay any other way, you might offer a bond of this type. It is very rare, and otherwise considered a taboo, because it creates an imbalance of power.”

Barely aware of doing it, Geralt tore anxiously at a hangnail, then realized what he’d done when it started to bleed. He pressed the pad of his thumb to it but was suddenly, keenly aware that Regis had to be able to smell it. 

Still, Regis did not react, seeming set on finishing his explanation. 

“Between vampires, mutual blood bonds are the highest form of commitment and intimacy.” He gestured broadly with one hand. “To offer someone your blood is to share your deepest self, as drinking another vampire’s blood allows you to look inside them and feel what they feel. It is offered only to those you love in the deepest and most lasting way.”

At those words, Geralt felt as though he were moving very fast through space even though the horse was only gently walking along, the world rushing past him as if he were an arrow shot from a bow. Every small noise grew loud and shocking, Regis’s voice reverberating through Geralt’s skull like a struck bell and creating a distressing reaction to every sound. 

“Given the situation, the unequal bond seemed the only appropriate thing to offer,” Regis continued, “as it is also a gesture of contrition or debt. Though Dettlaff and I were not personally involved in these most recent atrocities, there is a debt to humanity which we cannot repay.” 

Regis sighed, his voice softening so that it almost didn’t hurt anymore. But only almost. 

“With what you’ve been through in the war, you could not possibly be expected to consent to giving yourself to us in that way,” Regis remarked, as though this had been obvious at all, given what Geralt  _ had _ been commanded to do and what he had, in fact, given of himself already. “Even if you had somehow been willing, I could not have safely drunk from you. To do so would break my sobriety and would have been dangerous to us both.” 

Realizing that his own mouth was full of saliva, Geralt swallowed desperately. 

“I have heard that human sorceresses and mages can read minds," Regis continued. "Thoughts, memories, fantasies, all are apparently legible to them. But bonding is not like that. I cannot look into Dettlaff's mind and see what he is thinking, but I can look into him and _feel_ what he is _feeling._ Given that you seem not to have even noticed that you were bonded to us in that way, I think we must assume that on your end, at least, it has not worked because you aren’t a vampire,” Regis concluded. “You would have felt something from us at some point. Maybe not very much or very often, given that it would not surprise me if you are little interested in what we are feeling, and sometimes even between vampires it takes time for the full capacity of the bond to mature. But you would have felt _something.”_

With a kind of ecstatic horror, Geralt remembered the flashes of feeling he’d experienced upon drinking their blood at the ceremony. Had the bonds  _ worked _ in him, then? He didn’t want to be able to feel what they felt. Not at all, ever, not even if it was of tactical benefit somehow. 

“And on our end,” Regis went on. It seemed to Geralt that his words were like waves crushing the life out of him breath by breath. “We feel...drawn to you. It’s like an infatuation but moreso. Wanting to spend time with you, and impress you, and enjoying the way you look and move.”

Geralt would not previously have said it was possible for someone to actually die of words but he felt as though he were testing that now. 

“Little chance of anything coming of that, I think,” Regis said, sounding truly sad. “But anyway. The point is, that is what I mean by the bond. I am sorry I didn’t think to clarify it earlier.”

Geralt had to speak. There was a question he had to ask, because he desperately needed the answer, but now he barely knew how to make his mouth cooperate. 

“Do you--” he croaked, then cleared his throat, swallowed again, and tried, “Because of this, will I have to expect you to fuck me?”

Even out of the corner of his eye, Geralt could see the look of disgust Regis made. 

“Smelling and sounding like  _ that?” _ Regis said in a tone of pure incredulity. “The bond makes me infatuated, not a rapist. If you were somehow willing, then yes, I imagine Dettlaff and I would both be interested. But again, I understand there is probably little chance of that.” 

That was one less thing to brace himself for, at least. Geralt supposed that he had to be thankful for small mercies. 

“But in terms of what is happening now with the war...” Regis went on, because he was an unrelenting monster. “The officiant left our house before dawn on the night of the ceremony. He will be close to Beauclair already, where he will confirm to the others there that you have gone through with the bonding without issue. Which means that, hmm, probably by the end of next week, the release of prisoners will begin.”

Geralt gritted his teeth, staring at nothing to keep from responding. He needed it to be true, but his desire to believe Regis battled with his certainty that this was too good to be real and was merely another trap waiting to be sprung. His teeth ached from the pressure but he couldn’t relax.

Regis followed that grim discussion by offering Geralt the use of the alchemy equipment in the basement. Geralt was still contemplating where to get the ingredients for Black Blood and Vampire Oil without alerting his hosts (not that the oil would be much use without a blade to coat, unless he used one of the kitchen knives) when they trundled past the first of the farmhouses. 

The fields around the town were dotted with milk cows. The ones closest to the fence stared at the cart with their dark, long-lashed eyes. They were exceptionally lovely beasts, with pale short hair. 

Perhaps noting Geralt’s intent gaze upon them, Regis began to describe the Nazairi breeds, including this one. 

“Some of the southern vampires drink cow blood," Regis remarked then. "But Dettlaff has never been much for drinking. For him, intoxication is not a very desirable state, and blood has always been for special occasions, if at all. I think the others in the household might drink more if it weren’t for him. On the rare occasions that the household drinks, they butcher a deer.”

“Except you,” Geralt pressed, no longer able to restrain himself. “Because you don’t drink.”

“Indeed,” Regis confirmed. “Dettlaff’s disinterest in it has always baffled me. But then, he was not as miserable as I was in my youth. Or at least he did not feel the need to numb it as I did. We met a few times then, briefly, but only became properly close after I had already disavowed drinking. He never saw me at my worst. For that, I am grateful.”

How many deaths did Regis have on his hands? Geralt idly wondered. He had fought vampires who could be said to be addicted, mad creatures who could drain multiple people in a single night and still want more. Had Regis been like that? For how many years?

As the road wound through the farms and into the town proper, someone greeted Regis. A young man with pale eyes and light brown skin waved delightedly from the front lane of a homestead, setting down his woodworking to run right up the cart. Regis pulled the reins to bring the cart to a halt. He dismounted, embracing the young man with what looked like real pleasure. 

“Lovely to see you, my dear! How fares your sister?”

“Master Regis, I’m so glad I caught you! I worried I’d have to get up to piss at just the wrong moment and you’d go right by. And she’s ever so much better!” The lad ducked his chin. His words were bright but he didn’t look happy when he said it, which immediately got Geralt’s full attention. “She’s more like her old self again now she’s in less pain. It was right, what you said, about how pain makes strangers of people we love.” The boy fiddled with his tunic. “I know you’re on your way, and I know we already paid you, but can we send some butter home with you for your household? We’re just so grateful. Carlotta was just...”

“Childbirth isn’t easy,” the vampire said quietly. “Neither for the human body or mind. Give her time to recover. Is she nursing well?”

“Well enough,” the boy said, in just as low a tone. Clearly he didn’t want to be overheard, though he didn’t seem to care about Geralt. Perhaps the sister herself was in the house nearby. “She’s not crying all the time anymore. But she’s still listless, you know? She’ll feed the babe if we bring it to her, but...well anyway, she’s eating better too, not losing weight anymore! But she’s still not...not herself. ”

“There’s a--” Geralt started to say, and then cut himself off. But Regis looked up at him, prompting him to go on. Geralt grimaced at his own foolishness. 

“There’s a tonic I can make,” he sighed. He’d made it for Jaskier a few times in the years before the war when Jaskier’s knees had started to hurt him, and during the war for people with injuries that caused ongoing pain, so Geralt knew it was safe for humans. It contained several herbs that were mildly psychoactive to humans, brewed in such a way that their effect was mostly emotional rather than hallucinatory. Witchers often drank it as a soothing tea. He didn’t think it’d interfere with the mother’s milk. “It can help improve mood as well as pain," he explained.

This earned him a pair of sunny smiles. Geralt couldn’t wait until they moved along the road.

“Are you the new husband, then?” the young man said tentatively, peering up at Geralt now. “Fancy having not just one husband but two. How does that even work? You must need a very large bed.”

Regis intervened. He introduced the boy, whose family owned some of the lovely cows, and then held his arm out to indicate Geralt. 

“And this is Geralt, who has indeed come to stay with us because of the war. He is extremely knowledgeable about alchemy.”

_ Because of the war all right. _ Geralt wanted to make a face but he didn’t dare. 

When they finally got underway again, Regis related the story of Carlotta, who had given birth three months ago and hadn’t been doing well since. 

“It’s what’s known medically as postpar--” Regis began to say, but suddenly Geralt had hit his limit. 

“Postpartum depression. I know!” he interrupted. “People think it’s a malicious curse often enough that witchers get asked to solve it. Then they get angry when we can’t do anything. I learned about it in my training.”

“Oh,” Regis said in some surprise. “Has that ever happened to you? Erm, not the postpartum depression, the part where people get angry at you for not being able to lift the so-called curse.”

This, Geralt refused to answer. He sat in silence until Regis sighed and went on talking by himself. The truth was that it had happened twice in Geralt’s time on the Path, but he didn’t want to tell Regis about it. 

Once they reached the town proper, more and more people greeted them, and absolutely everyone stared at Geralt. He was used to this, because all witchers were used to this, but he was not accustomed to quite so much speculation about his love life, the state of his marriage, how chilling his eyes must look in bed, whether witchers were capable of performing their ‘marital duties’ or not, and a whole variety of similar statements. A surprising number of people expressed concern for Regis having to marry a witcher who looked like  _ that.  _ Only a rare few were envious of Regis.

Those who didn’t specifically criticize Geralt were full of questions about the marriage itself. Regis had already lived in ‘bachelorhood’ with Dettlaff for so long, was their relationship in trouble? Was it a doomed romance that had been destroyed by the demands of the war? 

Regis didn't respond to any of it, though Geralt _knew_ that he could hear it all too. Could probably hear more of it than Geralt, even. 

He watched Regis’s interactions with a critical eye, waiting for signs of anger and intimidation at the vampire's presence. While some of the people merely nodded at Regis, or touched their foreheads or hats in the mildly respectful way commoners did with low-ranking local gentry, many of them greeted Regis warmly, much like the boy at the farm. Though some people seemed to be using talking to Regis as a way to get a closer look at Geralt, Geralt saw nothing that indicated fear or unease--except at him. 

Geralt wanted to scream at them. Had they been deaf to five years of bloody warfare a mere few score miles away? Did they not know the risks? Did they not realize that Regis was an undying immortal who could shred them all like tissue paper at the least provocation?  Apparently the human capacity for denial was once again hard at work here. 

When their cart trundled into the market, every merchant knew Regis so well that most of them had goods set aside for him in anticipation of his arrival, and the ones who didn’t had only hesitated because his order varied from week to week. They loaded the cart with all sorts of things a household would need: olive oil, eggs, salt, garlic, onions, potatoes, flour, sausages, and a host of other items. Nearly everyone here, too, greeted Regis with at least politeness. Often it was outright pleasure. More rarely, some people inquired after ‘Regis’s friend, Lord Eretein,’ in the cursory way of people who were doing it to be polite to Regis himself while caring little for Dettlaff. 

One merchant, an older woman, greeted Regis with delight and immediately pulled him aside to regale him at length with the latest updates in the saga of the alderman’s daughter’s scandalous engagement. Regis admittedly allowed this gossip with a little too much willingness, glancing back at Geralt sometimes with what looked like embarrassment, but the woman was a good storyteller and by the end even Geralt found himself listening in despite his misgivings. Regis tried to extricate himself from the conversation eventually, protesting that it would be rude to keep Geralt waiting any longer--but this only drew her attention fully onto Geralt. 

“This morsel is the diplomatic husband?” she asked, and for once, Regis said nothing, apparently having met his match. “Well he's a fresh white loaf steaming right out of the oven and no mistake! At least you won’t be lacking for scenery! But a fine-looking man is nothing if he’s rude and unkind and you know what they say about witchers.” At this she gave Geralt a gimlet look.

“What they say about this witcher is that he wanted to end the war,” Regis said tartly, but this only made the woman laugh and slap affectionately at his arm. 

“Well, then, I can see you’re smitten already! That’s as it should be and I wish you well of it.”

She rounded on Geralt. “You hear me, though--you’d best treat our Regis right! He saved my Emmaline from losing her leg, and my Darrien was on death’s door from the stupid bastard across town and his quackery. We ain’t never needed a witcher and we never will when we’ve got our Lord Eretein already! Kept us safe, my mother, her mother before her, and her mother before her.”

Geralt stared at her, unable to think of a single response. It did not seem to matter, however, as she continued regardless. 

“I know Regis is of a particular constitution, and that others of that nature have done some things I shan’t speak of in polite company. But in Nazair we know what’s what and the good ocean air keeps all that inland sickness from happening here!”

“Now, Mrs. Hernandez, you _know_ that the ocean has nothing to do with it,” Regis groaned, as if this were a longstanding argument.

“Well you don’t see all that rot happening here, so how else do you explain it?” she demanded. 

Truly curious how Regis would respond to this fascinating inquiry, Geralt was disappointed when Regis merely sighed. 

“I do not wish to argue with you, but I want it noted that I only acquiesce to your interpretation under protest,” he said meekly. She let out a snort of triumph. 

It was still another five minutes before she allowed them on their way. 

When Geralt and Regis were most of the way through the market, one of the merchants anxiously pulled up her sleeve and showed Regis what was clearly an infected horse bite. 

“He got me a few days ago while I were mucking out his stall,” the woman complained. “He’s always been snappy, but he’d gotten into a right snit and gave me the chomp.”

Rather than answering the woman right away, Regis gestured at the bite and looked at Geralt. 

“What would you advise?” Regis asked. 

The woman turned curious eyes on Geralt at this, having mostly ignored him until now. “Oh, are you a doctor too? I suppose you knew each other from your college days and that’s why they married you two?”

“No, I’m...more of a battlefield medic,” Geralt sighed, ignoring her bizarre theory about their acquaintance--though he supposed they did look about the same age. “I wouldn’t know what to do with most illnesses, but wounds I do know about.”

She gave him a look of pity. “You hear awful things about the war. I imagine you’ve seen some things nobody should see.”

Rather than acknowledge that startlingly true statement, Geralt instructed the woman on how to clean and bandage the wound and how to mix up her own disinfectant cream using herbs she could get here in the market or on her own land. Regis let him without interrupting once.

When they left, Regis smiled at him. Geralt ignored the vampire. 

“We should mix up some wound cream of our own,” Regis said quietly as they went on. “In my experience, people don’t listen well to directions, and remember even less.”

Even despite agreeing, Geralt refused to engage further. But Regis seemed to take this in stride. He continued his stream of amiable chatter as they finished their marketing and went to the opposite end of town where the cobbler lived. 

Geralt keenly remembered the conversation about him at dinner. Regis took a small medical bag from the cart in with him and did not invite Geralt into the shop. Geralt tried his best to eavesdrop anyway, and while he heard some of the conversation, the most telling thing was that Regis did not take long there and emerged smiling. 

“As I hoped, the neighbors intervened, and his father has moved in with an aunt across town,” Regis said. “In the three days his father has been gone, he hasn’t once picked at his stitches! I only had to put a little ointment on him, and tell him to change the bandages more often. Better still, I think the woman next door may be sweet on him. She’s been looking in on him every day. I’ve suspected it for a while, but I think she was as frightened of his father as he is.”

Geralt nodded automatically at this and then cursed himself. Would he be able to tell if Regis had used any sort of enthrallment on someone in the house?

When they turned toward the estate, Regis began describing his process for creating mandrake alcohol. This Geralt listened to this with some interest; Lambert loved making his own moonshine out of various substances, some better and some worse, and Geralt couldn’t help but acknowledge how interested Lambert would be in the method Regis used as well as the result itself, which had an exceptionally fine strong flavor. 

When they finally arrived back at the estate, Geralt immediately took himself away to the blessed quiet of the herb garden, where he gathered up what he knew he would need for the woman’s horse-bite treatment as well as for the mood-improving potion for Carlotta. As he did so, Geralt thought of Roche and Ves and Siegfried and all the other humans he had fought beside over the years. He had learned human doctoring from them, for them, patching up their wounds as best he could. Roche and Ves had, at least, still been alive when he departed. Though now...now, who knew? Had this marriage accomplished anything? 

He took the herbs to the alchemy lab and down past the lesser vampires, who opened a few lazy eyes to watch him go by but otherwise ignored him. The lab was clearly set up exactly for situations like this one, with a whole host of ready-made jars and tins and crocks and bottles sitting empty along the walls, waiting to contain treatments. When Geralt finished, he held a small jar of disinfectant healing cream and a bottle of the mood-improving tonic with no idea of what to do with them. 

So with a miserable sigh, Geralt went to find Regis himself again. Geralt didn’t even know one of the women’s names, much less where she lived, and thus could not deliver the remedies on his own. So Geralt used his nose to track Regis through the house; he had spent enough time with him by now to be able to distinguish his scent from that of the other vampires. 

Geralt heard Regis before seeing him. As Geralt turned the final few corners, the vampire’s voice rose and fell in the cadence that indicated someone reading aloud from a text. The closer Geralt drew, the easier it was to identify that it was some sort of novel. 

"’I have heard, said he with great compassion, of the injustice your friend Sir Ferrars has suffered from his family. For if I understand the matter right, he has been entirely cast off by them for persevering in his engagement with a very deserving young woman. Have I been rightly informed? Is it’--greetings again, Geralt,” Regis interrupted his reading as Geralt came to stand in the doorway. 

This room, which had been locked when Geralt had explored the house before, lay on the west side of the building and boasted almost floor-to-ceiling windows, several of them open to allow in a breeze. The early evening sunlight poured through them and made the space very warm and bright. In deference to this, Regis sat in only his tunic and leggings, feet propped up on the seat of another chair nearby, his socks and outer coat bundled up beside him and even his tunic unbuttoned to his hips. Looking up at Geralt with curiosity, Regis laid the book on his knees, careful not to disturb the sleeping katakan pup curled up against the skin of his belly. 

Geralt had never seen bare feet on a living Deathless, only in the severed half-alive bodies cut off from their heads. So while he had previously been aware of the unusual foot anatomy--the big toe was far closer to a thumb than in humans, and all the toes were clawed--the way Regis’s bare toes idly flexed and rubbed against each other, just as a man might rub his fingers and thumb together in thought, somehow shocked Geralt. 

The room also contained Dettlaff--and not just Dettlaff, but Dettlaff seated entirely shirtless at an easel. When Geralt had come here before, he had smelled pungent odors seeping out around the door, but he hadn’t known what to make of the turpentine and oily chemicals. Now, he realized that he had been smelling oil paints and the chemical used to clean brushes. 

Dettlaff did not look up from his work. He expertly wielded a small brush to paint what even Geralt, who had very little understanding of art, could tell was a very beautiful rendition of the fields here in the summer, complete with some of the Nazairi cows. The fine musculature of Dettlaff’s back and arms and the dark fall of his hair around his shoulders caught Geralt’s eye for a long moment before he remembered who and what he was looking at and tore his gaze away. 

Turning back to Regis, Geralt held up the bottle of tonic and jar of salve. 

“I made the treatments we discussed today,” he muttered. “For Carlotta and the woman with the horsebite.” 

Regis’s face lit up and he started to thank Geralt, but Geralt quickly set the items down by the door and retreated away down the hall. The memory of Regis’s thin, nippleless chest and inhuman feet haunted him. 

It had been such a  _ domestic _ scene, full of such clear and casual intimacy between the two Deathless. Worse still, it reminded Geralt sharply of the way Lambert had used to read aloud during the winters. Back before the war, when the northern witcher schools had retreated to their keeps in the winters to wait out the brutal snow and ice, all of the Wolves would each bring back novels and plays for Lambert to read aloud. Lambert had loved to do dramatic readings and would make up voices for every character. Meaning Geralt and Eskel and the others, when there had still been others alive, had spent long hours over many years sharpening their swords, mending their clothes, spinning yarn, knitting socks, and otherwise listening to Lambert read. 

Just as Dettlaff apparently painted while listening to Regis. 

Homesickness filled Geralt with a furious pain. Unable to bear being inside the vampire house for a moment longer, Geralt ran outside and all the way down the cliff-path to the ocean. There, he shouted at the waves, kicking at the rocks. 

He skipped dinner. He could not have borne to sit at that table of monsters as though their kin had not slaughtered his brothers and friends. As though nearly everyone he had met and cared for over the last five years had not died to teeth and claws and invisible enemies in the night. 

When he finally returned to the house, he went straight to the kitchen. In it, he found three vampires hard at work washing dishes, none of them the two who normally cooked. Apparently here, too, they divided labor much like witchers did, which was that it was a different person who cleaned after someone else cooked. The vampires’ conversation silenced and they watched him warily as he gathered himself food for a meal and took it away to his room. 

When he’d finished numbly stuffing food into his mouth, he pulled open the letter-writing kit, only to be faced with the new horror of how to describe any of this to his fellow witchers. What was he to say? That the vampires were altogether too human and it made his skin crawl? That they had done nothing to hurt him, and unless they were lulling him into a false sense of security, that he now doubted they would? That he was bored and lonely and what he wanted more than anything, more than even news of the war, was for his few remaining friends to come here and be with him?

He couldn’t bear to admit it. It felt too much like defeat. Finally, after spending long minutes chewing on the stray bits of skin on his lips and around his cuticles, Geralt at last set the pen to paper. 

> _ Eskel, _
> 
> _ I am so far unharmed. They have adequately fed and housed me and no one has yet made attempts upon my person. The leeches have, in fact, left me largely alone. We’ll see if this continues.  _
> 
> _ Both of my contracted hosts are Deathless. In total, the household contains 12 higher vampires: 2 Deathless, 2 alps, 2 bruxae, 3 adult katakans, 1 teenager, and 2 young pups. There are also 3 ekkimarae, a massive alpha garkain, and 2 runty fleders, all of which are kept as pets. They are docile in a way we have never before witnessed from any lower vampire.  _
> 
> _ One of the Deathless, Regis, is the barber-surgeon and physician to the local town. I can imagine the face you’re making as you read that. I made it too. The locals are well aware of what he is but somehow allow it anyway. There must be a kind of madness here. Worse still, he says he used to be addicted to blood when he was younger. He swears that he abstains from it now, but I put little faith in that. He also tells me that the other vampires here don’t indulge much. I cannot confirm this, but I haven’t seen them drink, or smelled blood in the household or on the grounds, and none of them has acted as though under the influence.  _
> 
> _ The 2 katakan pups, however, are not only fed with the local rodent population but nursed on Deathless blood, which the adults tell me will make them far stronger as they grow. You remember the 3 katakans who killed Coen and Remus, the ones who were so much stronger and faster than any others we’ve ever fought? I wonder if they were fed the same way.  _

Upon reaching this point in the letter, in which Geralt had described all the things he believed other witchers ought to know, Geralt stared blankly at the wall. He expected that either Regis or some other vampire would read this missive. In all probability, the vampires would discover that Geralt was revealing information about his hosts and the letter would be intercepted and destroyed. 

If that was the case, then Geralt had to assume that anything private he wrote would be read by unfriendly eyes. It was one thing if they stopped him from releasing tactical information, that was just business, and another to let them belittle his intimate thoughts. 

To add to that difficulty in deciding what to say, Geralt had never been a writer beyond the necessity of putting down new information in the witcher bestiaries. He was not like Jaskier, who turned every private thought into poetry and song. Yet now, Geralt found himself faced with two grim possibilities in which he could not tolerate remaining silent: either the war was over and he might be trapped here forever and unable to see anyone he cared about again, or the war  _ wasn’t _ over and everyone he loved might perish before Geralt could escape and go to their side. 

There were certain things he dared not put in print no matter how veiled or coded his words. Questions about Ciri’s wellbeing fell into this category. Though vampires were ostensibly the real enemy here, it had not escaped anyone’s notice that most of Nilfgaard had been unaffected by the war, just as Nazair had. And the Emperor being who he was, Geralt wouldn't put it past him to have somehow incited a vampire war in the north for reasons of his own. As a result, information about Ciri’s location was guarded closely to keep it from falling into either the vampires’ hands or Nilfgaard’s. Not only had Ciri fought admirably during the war, but given the exceptional nature of her powers, she might well have a type of blood no vampire had ever tasted before. So she was especially at risk. 

Finally, after some minutes of agonizing, Geralt simply gave up. If a leech was going to read this letter, then let them read it. 

> _ I miss you terribly. I know it speaks very ill of me to desire this, and you may judge me for admitting it, but I wish they had taken both of us and that you were here at my side. I am contracted to 2 Deathless, surely they could have taken 2 witchers as well? But they did not, so I am and will remain alone here.  _
> 
> _ Please write back if you can. Tell me how our remaining brethren fare, in our school and the others? And what of our other friends, Roche, Ves, Iorveth, Yaevinn, Zoltan, Yennefer, Triss, Damien, Milton, and all the others?  _
> 
> _ \- Geralt _

The kit included sealing wax. Geralt carefully folded up the letter, sealed it, and addressed it to  _ Eskel, Witcher of the Wolf School, at the Garrison of the Guard in Beauclair - If Eskel is not available, give this to Damien de la Tour, Captain of the Guard. _ Then Geralt carefully wrote out a return address.

If this letter were intercepted, none of the names listed would be new information to any spying eyes. All of those mentioned in his letter were combatants known to be Geralt’s allies, all of whom had served in the war in the last few years. Geralt had no idea if Eskel was still in Beauclair, but it was where they had parted from one another, and if Eskel was gone, Damien would know where to send the letter. 

Just as he was thinking of how long it would take him to walk into town tomorrow to get the letter to the courier service, the distinctive noise of tiny padded feet came down the hall. Four feet, to be precise. 

He had shut the door behind him before sitting down to write, and now the door rattled a little as something (or two somethings) pushed on it from outside. Then the handle jerked but the door didn’t open, and Geralt’s eyebrows rose--if at some six months old the pups were clever enough to have figured out door handles, Geralt had to wonder exactly how intelligent they were and how much faster they matured than human infants. It was easy to picture the little puffballs jumping up to pull the handle down, but not quite managing to work in concert well enough to get the door open. 

Chittering from outside told him that his guess was probably correct. They must have gotten fed up with trying to get to him on their own and were now calling him to aid them in gaining entry.

He had half a mind to ignore them. Blockade the door, even. It was a poor idea to encourage attention-seeking behavior from vampire pups. But, well...what the hell else was he going to do this evening? 

With a sigh at his own foolishness, he rose and opened the door to his room. The two pups immediately grabbed at his trousers and socks, chittering furiously, frustrated that they couldn’t get the skin contact they needed to communicate properly. So with another sigh, Geralt mentally braced himself and reached down his hands. One of them grabbed a finger immediately.

The connection was, again, jarring enough that Geralt unintentionally sucked in a half-gasp that sent spit down his windpipe and set him to coughing. As someone used to the intrusions of sorceresses, whose mental touches were often so subtle as to be imperceptible, the sudden mental connection with the pup was rather like being struck upside the head. He went down on one knee from the sudden dizziness, with only just the presence of mind required to miss the pups. 

When he finished wheezing and swaying, he finally managed to parse what the pup wanted: for both of them to be lifted up into his bed to sleep there with him. 

With a grimace that was interrupted by a hiccup, Geralt complied, picking up that pup and relocating it to the bed. It occurred to him again to be offended that even the babies here considered him so unthreatening that they felt comfortable sleeping in his presence. But right now he was just too unhappy to be angry. So he just gritted his teeth as he prepared to touch the second one. 

To his surprise, coming into contact with this one was much less jarring. The communication was also much clearer: he was the first new thing in the household this pup had ever seen and he smelled bad all the time. This pup  _ was _ scared of him. 

“Fuck,” Geralt said quietly, then bit his lip and worried he’d taught the pups to swear. They obviously weren’t verbal yet, at least not with spoken language, but still. 

He knew he smelled bad. Even compared to his brothers, his body smelled more inhuman than any of the other witchers. And right now, with his constant stress and misery, he smelled downright acrid. He hadn’t washed today so the odor was strong. He could feel in the little pup’s mind that they had never smelled anything like him before. The first pup wanted to help him calm down, but this one was just afraid. 

Suddenly Geralt felt ashamed. The older vampires, they were powerful enough that they deserved his scorn and fury. Regis in particular had admitted to his own history of violence against humans and Geralt felt no compunction about being rude to him. But young creatures were all essentially the same: they wanted comfort and safety while exploring the world in which they found themselves. These two understood nothing of the war. All they knew was that some unfamiliar creature had come into their home and was stinking up the place with his misery. 

“Let me just,” he started to say, and then realized they wouldn’t understand him. So instead he pictured setting the pup down and going to take a bath. 

In return, Geralt got the image of them coming with him. He suppressed another sigh, put both pups back down on the floor, and made his way to the bathing chamber with the two little sets of footsteps following after him. 

It was pure luck that nobody else was bathing when he arrived. If they had been, he would have turned around and left again regardless of what it made the pups think of him. But as it was, he pumped water into one of the tubs, then used Igni on the surface to heat the top layer of the water almost to boiling. The pups watched in fascination as he created the flame, the more outgoing one chittering wildly. 

The room included a fireplace and kettle to heat water, along with a long staff used to stir, so he picked it up, mixing the tub so it’d be warm throughout. When he tested the water and it felt good, Geralt stripped his clothes off, set them aside, and climbed in. 

This set off another round of chittering, this time featuring unhappy peeps even from the shy one, so Geralt leaned over the edge and brought the pups into the bath with him. For a moment he worried they were at risk of drowning and he’d have to hold them the entire time, but it turned out that they were buoyant, naturally floating on the surface. They paddled around the tub, peeping happily, as Geralt scrubbed his soapy hands under his arms and between his legs. 

When he’d cleaned all his smelliest places, he subsided into the tub to just enjoy the heat and lightness of his limbs and let the pups tire themselves out swimming and splashing. When their movements slowed down and their wide-set black eyes started to droop, Geralt scooped them out and toweled down both himself and them. As with most furred creatures in the summer, they were shedding, so the towel wound up with lots of hair on it. Geralt wondered if there were brushes somewhere for this purpose, and then banished the thought. He wasn’t their parent, he was just the poor bastard stuck in a house with them. 

Once they were settled in his bed with him he fell asleep almost instantly. 

**

In the middle of the night he was awoken by the pups shrilling at his door. He had unthinkingly closed it before going to bed and now they couldn’t get out. Once he’d stumbled out of bed to open it and allow them to leave, he found himself awake and unhappy. 

The pups themselves exuded such strong feelings of sleepiness when they were ready to sleep that it was easy to just fall to sleep with them. He had never experienced anything like it with a katakan before. The adults he had encountered during the war, or even before the war on contracts, had not done this. But then, he considered, he hadn’t spent much time in physical contact with them. Possibly sleeping beside an adult katakan would affect humans (or human-adjacent beings, in the case of witchers) the same way. 

He’d certainly had katakans speak into his mind during combat before, to great effect. He’d had katakans taunt him, or describe how they’d eat everyone he loved, or graphically picture how they’d rape him. Their telepathy had always been, to him, just another weapon like their claws. 

Sitting by himself in his bed in the dark, now, he found many of those images coming back to him. For nearly an hour he stared at the wall, feeling sick and furious, before he forced himself to get up, put some clothing on, and go to the kitchen for something more to eat. 

He found it abandoned. It was too early even for anyone to even be in here to begin the day’s baking. He had to hold a small flame in his hand to see by, and then use it to light some kindling stacked near the oven to use as a torch. 

When he finished, he took his food back to his room and ate it mechanically again. He had learned the trick of how to stop feeling anything a long time ago. Distantly he thought it was a pity not to taste all the rather excellent food, but it wasn’t worth the dread and misery.

When he’d finished, he lit a candle for himself and pulled open the writing kit again. 

> _ Lambert, _
> 
> _ I hate this place. I know you will understand me when I say that it is all the dread of being a trainee in the Bastion without even anything to do. The leeches have done nothing to attack me yet, and perhaps they will not because political necessity prevents them. But I fear it all the time regardless.  _
> 
> _ I don’t know what to do with myself. I could go through my training forms, but without a sword it would only reinforce wrong things. I feel the desperate lack of both other witchers and work to do. A sparring match would be just the thing right now, or a contract, but they have killed all the monsters for many miles. There is nothing for me to do, no way I can be of use. _
> 
> _ All I can think of is what is happening to you. Are you safe?  _
> 
> _ \- Geralt _

He sealed this too and then sat at the desk, numb, for a long time. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The passage Regis reads aloud is from Sense & Sensibility by Jane Austen. Because I love that story and I couldn't resist.


	5. Chapter 5

As soon as dawn’s first grey light had begun to creep in at his window, Geralt pulled on his boots, tucked the letters into a pocket, and began the walk to the town. Fog had rolled in from the ocean overnight, and the damp chill felt good contrasted with the heat of his moving body. 

By the time he’d reached the town proper, it was full morning and people were out and about. Many of them again looked at him as though he were a curiosity, and murmurs about the war and witchers and marriage followed him everywhere. 

But Geralt asked for and received polite instructions of where to take the letters. They were, apparently, to be left at the small bookstore for pickup by couriers every few days. It was a classic example of small-town logic: books were words and letters were words, so they must go together. 

When he was handing over the two letters, however, he realized again that he had no money with which to pay for the service. But when he expressed this, the issue was waved away. 

“‘Tis no matter, sir. Mister Regis will be by on Thursday for another shipment. I’m only surprised he didn’t stand you the money.”

“It...slipped his mind,” Geralt said at first, and then amended this to, “He offered to take my letters next Thursday. But I needed to stretch my legs today, so I brought them myself.”

As he began the long walk home he fell into a kind of miserable blankness. By the time he’d reached the manor again, he was aware that he was hungry and sunburnt but he didn’t have any reason to care about either fact. 

For sheer lack of anything else to do, though, he went to the kitchen. The katakan there looked even more disgruntled to see him today. She slapped together a tray of leftovers and cheese and more of those glorious peaches, pushing it into his hands before hissing, “You come in here like this, demanding meals, and do you even help with the dishes? Are you good for anything but coming into our house and eating our food and disrespecting Dettlaff and Regis?”

Through his shock and defensive urge to cast Quen, Geralt noted that she pronounced Regis’s name differently. Geralt backed away from her, clutching the tray.

“Tcha!” the bruxa grimaced, which was not a reassuring expression given the teeth involved. But she laid a hand on the much-taller katakan’s arm. Her spindly fingers curled just above the elbow-spike. “There’s no need to be so rude, dearheart.”

“He is the one being rude!” the katakan spat, gesturing at Geralt. Her black, beady eyes narrowed at Geralt and she turned her face to one side to get a better look at him. “To be given what he has been given and still act--”

“When have I been given anything that I wanted?” he growled at her. “Brought to a place where everyone is a stranger to me, surrounded by those who have been my enemies--”

“The bond!” the katakan pressed, raising her voice now. “Of course a witcher would want Dettlaff to _debase_ himself as he has!”

“What Caileis means is that the other members of the household would appreciate your help washing the dishes or some other task,” the bruxa interrupted, putting on her human form and placing herself between them. To Geralt’s surprise, at this, the katakan subsided, her mouth twisting up unhappily as she withdrew. “A household of this size takes a lot of work to run.”

“I...” Geralt stumbled, wrong-footed by this mundane request. “Is there something that needs doing?”

“I would say we need help with the cooking sometimes, but I doubt Caileis would allow it.”

Given the way the katakan in question snarled and stalked away to return to cutting up onions, that seemed to be the case. 

The question on the tip of Geralt’s tongue was _Why do Dettlaff and Regis even eat?_ Deathless were so magical that what they more properly needed was a regular intake of power, not food, and they seemed to be able to draw that energy from the very air and earth if necessary. Deathless could survive indefinitely without food, and even regenerate lost limbs. Or whole bodies, if left alone long enough.

But Geralt knew better than to ask, especially right now. Feeling awkward and strange, he merely said, “I will come after dinner to help wash.”

As he left the kitchen and went out into the hall, he heard the katakan let out a mournful little sound. 

“I’m sorry,” she rumbled to the bruxa. “I know it is Dettlaff’s decision and we must respect it. But I cannot help but feel--”

Geralt escaped with his food before he was caught listening. 

**

The dinner that evening passed in relative peace. This time, Geralt observed Regis and Dettlaff carrying on an apparently one-sided conversation with the young katakan with the dramatic face scar. Given the species, Geralt assumed the teenager (whose name Geralt had forgotten) was using telepathy to answer. 

What little of the conversation Geralt could hear baffled him. 

“Millions of years,” Dettlaff said with a crooked smile. “On foot, even longer.” A pause, as though to let someone else speak. “Calculating that will make a good problem for you to work on tomorrow.” 

Another silence, then Regis said, “Depends on the species,” before turning to Geralt to ask, “In your experience, how many miles can a human walk in a day? I am teaching Kaelag mathematics, and calculating how long it would take people of various species to walk to the moon will be of more interest than the dry problems in his textbook.”

Geralt stared. Then, helplessly, he responded, “Most humans manage three miles in an hour, assuming they’re relatively fit and walking with purpose rather than just ambling along. A witcher can easily do four.”

The young vampire nodded. Geralt couldn’t help thinking that Kaelag’s scar was on the same side of his face as Eskel’s was, and every bit as big and disfiguring. Like Eskel’s, the scar had only just avoided blinding him in one eye, and had left his lips permanently misshapen. As the teenager ate, he revealed that the wound had taken out one of his big front fangs as well. 

With an unfamiliar pang of guilt, Geralt realized that if Kaelag had been born anywhere outside of Nazair, then he had likely acquired the scar when someone had seen a young vampire and attacked with a silver blade. Or perhaps a dimeritium bomb with shrapnel in it--the southern witchers, who had come north out of Nilfgaard to help in the war, had greatly improved the selection of bombs used against vampires. 

Geralt knew little about how quickly katakans matured, because to his knowledge no witcher had ever spent enough time among vampires to make a study of it. But Kaelag had the lanky, awkward build of a teenager, and ears so big that even by katakan standards he hadn’t yet grown into them. 

Dettlaff, meanwhile, sat back in his seat and set down his utensils to fix Geralt with a long stare. Unnerved, Geralt scowled back. 

“Would you be interested in learning our language?” Dettlaff asked at last, and one of the alps further down the table gasped. “I am teaching Kaelag to write in it. I could teach you to speak it at the same time.”

Geralt himself felt no less shocked than the vampires. The ability to read the vampire script had been a hard-won asset in the war. Geralt himself had taken an interest in learning it, so he knew more than most, but even so he needed a dictionary (they had nothing like a complete one) and a cypher to be able to even translate it in print, much less understand it when spoken aloud. The only words he truly recognized were the ones often shouted at him in combat: variants on _blood, witcher, dead, and kill._

“That...would be useful,” Geralt said, eyes narrowed. Surely there was some catch to this? 

But Dettlaff merely nodded and continued with his meal. A few minutes later, his further conversation with Kaelag was interrupted by the arrival of the pups. With a long-suffering sigh, Dettlaff again unbuttoned his tunic and gave them his shoulder and chest. The outgoing one let out little noises of contentment before falling asleep in the middle of nursing, one ear squished into wrinkly folds against Dettlaff’s chest. 

**

After dinner Geralt went to the kitchen to help with cleanup. One of the alps there immediately pushed him onto a seat by a large tub full of soapy water and dirty dishes, handed him a sudsy rag, and set him to work. 

This, too, felt painfully familiar. Memories of many decades of doing this at Kaer Morhen rushed into his mind. Lambert had a peculiar hatred for drying dishes, and Eskel a worrying habit of juggling crockery, much to Vesemir’s dismay. When Coen and Remus and the others had been alive, Remus would often start singing and the others would join in. Coen could play the Elven flute, so he’d fetch it out. Geralt had never participated, the best he could produce was a croak thanks to damage in his throat from the second Trial. But he had at least been able to tap his foot and bob his head to the beat. 

The vampires weren’t singing, but they were chattering, talking about sewing projects, and Dettlaff’s new series of landscapes, and how one of them preferred his portrait work and another preferred his still lifes, and then how one of them had what sounded like a very stupid infatuation with a girl in the village and was filled with dramatic and overblown distress about it as a result because the alp wasn’t very good at maintaining her human shape and even if she were the girl probably didn’t like women anyway and the alp couldn’t just explain to the girl that alps didn’t _work_ like that so it was all _hopeless._

Curiosity got the better of Geralt--curiosity and a desire to distract himself from his memories. He was aware that alps and bruxae were both single-sex species, each with the parts to reproduce with any other individual of their kinds, but that was all any witcher knew about the subject. He would have asked more about that, but he'd had more than enough of humans speculating about _his_ sex life this morning and wasn't about to do that to anyone else. Not even a vampire. 

“How does your shapeshifting work?” he asked instead during a pause in the conversation. The vampires turned to look at him, clearly surprised that he was talking at all.

“In what respect?” one of them, a bruxa named Tiorsale, asked him after a pause. 

Geralt gestured at the infatuated alp, who he thought was called Calliope. “I’ve never heard of vampires struggling with certain forms. What makes it difficult?”

“Oh!” Calliope exclaimed. “Oh. I’ve never tried to explain it to someone before. It’s...” She thought for a moment, and the others let her, seemingly also interested in what she would say. “Everybody has some sort of accent, based on how and where they learned to speak a language. You can learn to alter your accent, but it requires constant attention to maintain it, right? Some people are good at continually remembering. For some it just becomes second nature and they don’t have to remember anymore. And others...” she gestured at herself, “slip a lot.”

As if to demonstrate, she changed her form. The blood-red spots all over her neck, chest, and forearms vanished first, and then the bone-white of the rest of her skin turned a lovely warm brown. She seemed to struggle for a moment with her face and hair--the teeth she managed with ease, changing her maw of fangs quickly into blunt human incisors, but the eyes and hair gave her more trouble. Her hair kept blushing a shade of bright crimson that was unnatural in humans, even redheads, and she couldn’t make her eyes stay brown and white rather than red and black for more than a second at a time. Finally she relaxed back into her vampire shape with a rush of breath, pressing a hand to her forehead as if with a headache. She closed her eyes.

“Oof. That’s tiring,” she admitted. 

Geralt stared at her. He’d seen vampires transform before, usually right before attacking him. Being able to disguise oneself completely as human was a handy way to ambush people. He hadn’t ever realized that it was something that might be difficult for some vampires. 

“I think I understand,” he said after a moment. “I once taught myself a Rivian accent because I thought it made me sound more respectable. I did it young, when my mind was more flexible in that way. I think it would be much harder if I tried to learn a new accent now.”

“Just so!” Calliope agreed seeming delighted that he understood. “Vampires who learn a human form when they’re younger often find it easier to maintain. But my mother was a recluse, so I didn’t even see humans till I was almost thirty.”

Geralt’s eyebrows climbed again. 

“So how do you choose your human shape?” he asked. “Do you just pick one you like?”

Tiorsale chimed in then. “No. Or, well, not usually. For most of us, there’s a shape that’s easier to maintain than others, and feels more like the right one.”

“Wait,” Geralt said, setting down the dish he’d been scrubbing, fascinated now. “So you’re saying a single vampire can have multiple human forms?”

“Well, some of us can,” Calliope agreed. “Some are really good at it. But I can’t even manage one very well, and that’s the easiest one.”

That confirmed something those on the front lines of the war had long suspected but had never been able to prove. Geralt felt a kind of vindication for a moment, but it quickly faded behind the sick memories of all that had happened when vampires shed their human forms. It was easier, in some ways, to be around the vampires here since they so rarely bothered with their human shapes--except for the two Deathless. And even they seemed to only make a marginal effort, given what Geralt had seen in the painting studio the other day. Geralt knew that some Deathless could appear completely human in every detail--which made Geralt wonder, now, if Regis and Dettlaff both found some aspects of human appearance more difficult to maintain than others. 

“You get a lot more practice in some parts of the body than others, too,” Tiorsale added, as though thinking along the same lines as him. “Human fingernails are useful, so I often keep my hands in that shape regardless of what the rest of me looks like. And your jaws--” she changed her teeth, wiggling her lower jaw back and forth, “I like the way it feels to be able to move my jaw in more directions than one even when I’m not chewing. I can’t do that in my natural shape.”

That made sense to Geralt. Predators couldn’t ‘chew,’ really, just bite, because their jaws only moved up and down. Back-and-forth jaw movement was the purview of herbivores and omnivores.

But looking at her mouth as it relaxed back into her fangs brought back too many memories of fangs just like that sinking into his flesh. Black Blood was a terrible potion to take and made any witcher feel like a dead thing walking. It ought to have been a last resort, taken no more than once every decade and brewed specially for extremely difficult contracts, not something every witcher had learned to carry with him all the time. He couldn’t help but remember, now, the acidic taste of the potion, the way it burned his sinuses and throat and belly and made his already raspy voice worse still. It sapped his energy and then left him fighting through fatigue when he most needed strength and speed. Black Blood was a devil’s bargain, but often it was a choice between being killed because the potion had slowed a witcher down and he couldn’t respond fast enough, or because he hadn’t taken it and he was overwhelmed by multiple vampires attacking him at once.

There were three here in close proximity, and he was unarmed and unarmored. His thin fabric clothing would do nothing to protect his skin and suddenly that felt like the presage of his own doom.

“I can see why it would be difficult to begin a relationship with a human,” Geralt said desperately, trying to change the subject because he didn’t want to panic in front of them. 

Given the flare of Calliope’s nostrils, she smelled the fear on him anyway. Her expression changed to one of concern, and she reached out to lay one clawed hand on Geralt’s shoulder. 

He jerked away from her touch, sending soapy droplets slopping all over the lap of his tunic. Calliope withdrew her hand, looking subdued. 

“Yes,” she agreed, sounding very sad. “This...this is pretty much what would happen if I were to approach her. Even here, I think most humans would only be able to feel fear, looking at me.”

Geralt stared at the floor and nothing else and forced himself to breathe. If he had been alone, he could have fallen into a meditative state. But now his mind was screaming at him that he couldn’t do that because he was surrounded by vampires. 

So he washed the dishes. He focused on feeling the ceramic surfaces to make sure they were clean, looking only at the circular motions of the cloth. 

Eventually the vampires realized that he was not going to engage again and continued their own conversation, this time about how they expected the ending of hostilities was going for their kin throughout the continent. But it was stilted and subdued now, full of unnatural pauses. 

When the mass of dishes were finally done, Geralt dried his hands and just walked out of the kitchen.

The silence of his room galled him. He considered trying to meditate, as he’d wanted to do before, but he still found that he didn’t dare. 

Instead he pulled out the letter kit again and wrote another letter to Eskel, this one detailing everything he had just learned about vampires’ shape-shifting abilities. 

As he wrote, Geralt realized that the pups would probably join him again in his room that night. He sighed, set down the pen, and opened up his door a crack to allow them to enter. 

But he finished his letter, sealed it, and they hadn’t come. He lay down in his bed and the blankets of it caught on the scars of every bite wound and he didn’t sleep. He couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t sleep and couldn’t sleep and all he could think about was what might be happening to Lambert and Eskel and Ciri and Yen right now. 

He tried not to remember what had happened to Vesemir last year but the images wouldn’t let go of him. Lambert had thrown up and run away. He and Eskel had been up to their elbows in blood from picking up the pieces so they’d be able to burn them altogether in one place. Geralt could still feel each individual fragment of Vesemir in his hands as he’d carried them to the pyre. 

What if that had already happened to the others? What if they had already died and Geralt had not been there to protect them? What if he never received responses to his letters and he had to beg for leave to go to their graves, if indeed they even had any?

Finally he rose from his bed, dressed himself, and went out into the garden. As he expected, he found vampires there, two of the katakans at work. 

The female katakan’s ears tilted toward the open door but she otherwise ignored Geralt, continuing her task of picking fruit in the orchard. She already had a heavy basket at her feet. The male katakan was weeding the mandrakes growing along the wall, and at the sound of Geralt’s footsteps, he brushed the dirt off his hands and tentatively crossed the garden to where Geralt stood. 

Before he could say anything, the massive garkain slammed open the cellar door and tore across the garden, the ekkimarae and fleders bounding after it and chasing it around the orchard. Geralt had a Quen shield up and Igni at the ready before he realized that the lesser vampires were not at all interested in him. All five of them dodged around between the trees, clawing up several of the cobblestones and a mandrake root as they did so, until the garkain leapt over the wall of the estate and vanished into the forest. The fleders and ekkimarae scrambled over the wall after it, much less graceful but still determined to continue playing. 

Because play it was. It was undeniable, and none too different from watching stray dogs play with each other in the poorer districts of Novigrad. Geralt hadn’t known that any of the species of lesser vampires engaged in play, much less between species in this way. He’d seen lesser vampires fight one another for dominance, but not this. 

As the sound of the garkain crashing through the underbrush retreated into the distance, the katakan said quietly, “Is there a problem, Master Witcher?”

The words were cautious. Geralt sighed. 

“No,” he answered, and almost left it at that before continuing, “Is it...normal for vampire households to keep lesser vampires as pets?”

The katakan--Geralt recalled his name being something like Rufus--stretched one leg, flexing the long padded toes out before settling. He hadn’t been using any sort of trowel to dig up the roots of the weeds, Geralt realized--and why would he, when he had long, steely claws able to do the same?

“Regis would know more about this,” Rufus said tentatively. “But I can tell you that many gatherings of vampires include some of them. From what I know, they were largely viewed as pests before the Conjunction, similar to how humans view feral dogs. But now, to many of the oldest of us, they are at least something familiar from the homeworld. And the younger ones, like Dettlaff and Regis, grew up around them.”

“How do you keep them fed?” Geralt asked, half-dreading the answer. All lesser vampire species were carnivorous. “Are deer really enough?”

Rufus smiled. It was not a pleasing sight on a katakan’s face in the night-time. It raised Geralt’s hackles. 

“They would be, but they get bored of deer sometimes,” Rufus admitted, and Geralt failed to see what was amusing about this ominous statement. “Any of the rats and mice and rabbits that the babies do not eat, they will eat also. And beetles. The--” Rufus used a word in the vampiric language which sounded like ‘elieivana’, “--considers beetles a great delicacy. You have not had a good day until you’ve seen her chasing after beetles.”

If Geralt was understanding right and Rufus meant the garkain, that actually was a pretty funny mental image. 

“Besides,” Rufus continued, “they are very lazy beasts. The _elieivana_ _,_ she sleeps seven days out of nine.” As if summoned, the garkain reappeared over the garden wall, tearing across the grounds and leaping up the side of the building, running across it, and then back down across the gardens and over the wall again, the fleders still chasing after her. The ekkimarae, seemingly tired out, perched atop the wall and watched this happen. Rufus sighed, waving a hand at the spectacle that had Geralt in a reflexive cold sweat. “When she is awake, she does this. Fucks up the gardens and leaves me shits the size of my head.”

This got a chuckle out of Geralt despite himself, who then realized what he was doing and felt almost dizzy--this was a _garkain_ they were talking about. A garkain’s head looked like a ballsack that breathed and had an ugly face attached to it, and they were deadly. It wasn’t some eccentric breed of dog which might look ugly but was essentially harmless and affectionate. And besides, there were ugly dogs and then there were _garkains._

But then, Geralt supposed, dogs had been wolves once. Wolves were still a terror in some parts of the continent, but that hadn’t stopped some crazy bastards long ago from feeding them and bringing them into their homes--and now there were more breeds of dog than Geralt could count. Really, Geralt supposed, the surprise wasn’t that some Deathless kept garkains as pets, the surprise was that, so far as Geralt could tell from the witcher bestiaries, garkains didn’t look any different now from three centuries ago.

With a sigh, Geralt went back into the house. He hadn’t sealed his letter to Eskel yet, so he crossed out his signature and added what he’d just learned of lesser vampires. 

Then he took his candle to the library, selected a few books, brought them back to his chamber, and read until dawn.

**

By the time noon arrived that day, Geralt felt worn thin. Nonetheless, he went to the library to meet with Dettlaff and Kaelag. Kaelag regarded Geralt with interest, at first, but when Geralt merely sat down and let Dettlaff set Kaelag up with his lessons (which seemed to involve translating a text from Nordling into the vampiric tongue) Kaelag soon turned his attention to his work. 

Then Dettlaff leveled his entire focus on Geralt, pale blue eyes studying Geralt as if thinking. 

“Basic nouns first,” he decided after a pause, and then set to naming the table, the shelves, the books, and a variety of other items and having Geralt repeat the words back to him. The tongue itself, he said, was called _Rasna._ And then he pointed at himself. 

_“Tiur-ziva,”_ he said, getting an eyebrow raised in question at Geralt. _“Tiur-ziva_ is our word for our kind,” he said, answering the unasked question. “Not what the witchers call us.”

“All vampires, or...?”

“No. Just the ones you call the Deathless. _Tiur-ziva_ means...hmm. Moon-kin, perhaps.”

 _“Tiur-ziva,”_ Geralt said, practicing the feel of it in his mouth. _“Tiur-ziva.”_

He had a good memory, but getting his mouth to make the sounds come out right was more difficult. Dettlaff was patient, correcting Geralt and giving him useful directions for how to shape his mouth until Dettlaff proclaimed it ‘good enough’. 

Much of the work necessitated Geralt watching Dettlaff’s mouth and tongue to see what to do, which made Geralt much more aware of the organs in question. This resulted in Geralt’s mind wandering in two very different directions: thinking about the deep scarring he bore from vampire teeth, and...well. Dettlaff was wearing his human skin, which was _very_ handsome. It wasn’t difficult for Geralt to picture himself kissing that mouth. It would be a slightly lower temperature than a human mouth, enough to feel warm to Geralt’s fingertips but cool to his lips. Geralt couldn’t help but imagine it pressing slow and sensuous to his own.

Before the War, he knew, the thought of dallying with a vampire would have been intriguing, assuming the vampire was a relatively decent person or willing to fake it for long enough not to trouble Geralt. He’d slept with nonhumans before--elves and dwarves, of course, a doppelganger, several halflings, and whatever sorceresses, mages, and witchers counted as. But he’d also fucked a few nonhumans most witchers would consider “monsters,” too: a succubus, a werewolf, and one troll. In those days, adding a vampire to the list would have been nothing more than an amusing story to tell Eskel over the winter. 

But now...

Well, Geralt supposed, _thinking_ about it wasn’t dangerous. Assuming it was Dettlaff or Regis, they were already his husbands, after all, and everyone knew it. Which meant that Geralt might now simultaneously be the most famous yet least-touched catamite in history. If all he got out of it was some occasional pleasant thoughts, then at least there was that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got the name for the vampire language from [this fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16954254) by kaeltale.  
> I got the Etruscan from [here](http://www.etruskisch.de/pgs/vc.htm).


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very short chapter this time, but hopefully the Soft Content in it makes up for that. 
> 
> Content Warning: this chapter contains brief positive references to past drug use.

Some days later, Geralt was awoken at an awful hour of the night by the pups climbing up his blankets and into bed with him, peeping the entire way. Rather than joining him for sleep, they pulled at his hair and even his nose until he rose from bed, bombarding him with images of chasing rabbits. 

“Why the fuck do you need me for that,” he demanded of them. He didn’t expect an answer and didn’t get one, as they had already jumped off the bed and were chirping by the door.

Given that he was now awake and unlikely to be allowed to go back to sleep, he pulled clothes on and went out into the garden with them, where, of course, it was raining. Geralt sighed, resigning himself to being wet and cold. It was just like being back on the Path, really. 

That thought stuck in his mind as the pups ran out into the rain. This was what it had been like for so many years--out on the road no matter the weather, getting rained on until the insides of his boots were a swamp and everything stuck to him and chafed. If he was with Jaskier, Jaskier would complain every moment about what it was doing to his complexion and his lute and his notebooks. Then they would scrape together the coin for a few days at an inn so they could lay out their soaked clothes. Then Geralt would attempt to dry them faster with a finely-aimed and very small Igni. The recall was so powerful that he could almost smell the slightly scorched wool and linen now, and the soft human scent of Jaskier’s wet hair. 

Geralt missed Jaskier and he missed the warm comfort of someone else in bed with him, but he didn’t miss the endless problems of travel. Wearing through so many boot-soles in a year, constantly needing to wash his socks, the endless drudgery of haggling over the price of contracts, and _still_ being cheated whenever people thought they could get away with it. He hated having to use Axii to get what he’d already been promised, it made him feel even more dirty and exhausted, but he hated being paid less than he deserved, too. 

During the war, with so many people dying, witchers had often slept in empty houses left behind by attacks. With whole villages murdered in a single night in so many locations, the only benefit was that witchers rarely had to worry about accommodations anymore. 

The pups emerged from the burrow soon after. Their little faces and claws were clotted with blood, and the rest of them was now more mud than fur. The sight of their faces made him feel ill, remembering Coen and Remus, but he pushed the thoughts away. He couldn’t be thinking it if they touched him. 

“I see why you needed me,” he sighed as they grasped at his bare feet and chirped, now giving him the image of bath-time. “I’m not getting that on my shirt, so you can just walk to the baths.”

They left muddy little footprints through several rooms on the way. Geralt mentally prepared himself to clean that up too, tomorrow. 

In the bathing chamber there was, he found, a smaller tub. He had initially thought it was a footbath, but now he realized it was probably for the pups. He filled it with water, heated it, stripped out of his wet clothes, and then sat down beside the small tub as the pups climbed in. 

_Control your thoughts,_ he told himself. _The war doesn’t belong here._

As soon as he touched the pups, however, it was done for him. They were delighted with the warm water, and when he began to finger-comb the mud out of their fur, scratching gently at their backs and little round bellies, their own feelings of comfort and pleasure poured into him. 

Before Kaer Morhen had been sacked, there had been a particular herb that witchers grew, the cracked seeds of which contained a chemical that gave witchers the most blissful high. Often they had put the seeds into bread or baked goods and consumed it that way. In the sacking of Kaer Morhen, the entire plot of it had been burned, and since it was lethal to humans and elves, no one else had ever had cause to keep supplies of it. Geralt hadn’t been able to find seeds of it since, not even from witchers of other schools. But he still remembered the anticipation of waiting for the delicious tingling softness to overtake him. 

As he bathed the pups, even as he gently rubbed blood out of the grooves of their ears, he felt just like that. Like winters with Eskel, eating fresh seed bread straight from the oven, so hot that the steam when they tore it open scorched their fingertips and immediately melted the butter they spread on it. After eating several of the little round buns they had lain in bed bed together, high and affectionate and in love. 

Once they were clean, Geralt lifted the pups out of the bath and they ran, dripping, to a small cupboard along the wall. In it, he found the brushes he’d wanted the last time he’d bathed with them. They looked to be some sort of boar hair, set into wood and obviously expensive.

First he dried the pups and then sat again. The pups, clearly used to what came next, laid themselves out along his thighs, peeping in anticipation. They sent him clear images of what to do, and he stroked the brushes through their hair, starting just behind their horns and moving down all the way to their little tails, still buried in all their fluff. 

Stroke by stroke, in a slow, quiet way, the knowledge sank in that these were not animals. Nor were they monsters, really. They were babies, and would someday be adults. Not the vicious predators he had fought in the war, but _people_ in the way Ciri was a person. He hadn’t ever seen her at this age, hadn’t gotten to bathe her when she was too young to do it by herself. But he still remembered her small body in his arms at the age of twelve when he’d first met her, and the smell of her hair and skin that had reached into some animal part of him and told him _This you protect._

What would the pups look like at that age? Or at twenty-one, as Ciri was now? Would they be like Calliope, unable to take human forms because they hadn’t learned early enough? Or would they learn the shape from him, from seeing him move and feeling his touch in moments just like this? 

The thought filled him with a kind of exquisite strangeness. He was at once outside himself and yet very much in his own skin, feeling the weight of their little bodies on his thighs, the coarse black hairs of their overcoats sticking to the white of his own leg hairs, and the downy softness of their undercoats closer to their skin and around their ears. They purred against him, the tiny rumbling of it soothing, the little blunt claws of their toes curled against the bare skin of his belly. The flagstones were cool beneath his buttocks without being cold, as unlike most rooms in the house, a fire was kept tended here most of the day. The current fire popped and crackled as it burned down, and the whole room smelled of pine wood and water and honey-scented soap and the subtle, almost sweet scent of the pups themselves. 

Would he be here long enough to see them grow up? For once, the thought didn’t make him feel as though he were drowning.

He sat brushing them for a long time. They didn’t make him stop, and he had no other current duties to attend to. He didn’t have to go sharpen his sword or clean blood off his armor after this. In the morning, he would ask for a mop and bucket to clean their little footprints and that was all. 

The grey light of dawn was creeping through the windows and all three of them had long since dried off when the pups finally clambered off him and trotted over to the door, peeping again. A moment later, Regis walked in. 

Geralt snatched the damp towel and pulled it over himself. Seeing this, Regis turned away, busying himself with building up the fire and filling the large kettles for hot water as Geralt rose and wrapped himself. Having spent so much of his life in close quarters with other people, Geralt wasn’t ashamed of his nakedness, but nor did he want a Deathless looking at it.

“Good morning,” Regis greeted him politely, moving carefully so he didn’t bump the pups with his legs. “I trust the little ones haven’t been giving you too much trouble?”

“No,” Geralt croaked, his voice rough from disuse. “No, I--no.”

Bending to gather his wet clothes, he retreated to his room. Once there, he dressed himself and sat at the desk. He opened the letter-writing kit, looked at the blank paper, and then closed it again.

How was he supposed to write to Eskel or Yen about this? What was he supposed to say? 

With no easy answer to that question, he settled for his familiar habit of saying nothing.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning: this chapter includes mentions of violence to children in the past.

Geralt spent that morning trying to lose himself in housework. He ran into Calliope near the kitchens and she gave him the mop and bucket in clear delight at not having to do the task herself. He began with the muddy footprints at the door to the gardens, and then moved to the mud and dirt near the door to the stables, and by the time noon rolled around and Dettlaff would expect him in the library, Geralt had managed to think of very little but the dirt on the floors. 

That effort was destroyed as soon as Geralt arrived in the library for his lessons in _Rasna._ Though the clocks had just struck noon, Dettlaff had not arrived yet. Kaelag was already there, however, dutifully working on his translation. Geralt picked a book off the shelf, intending to read as he waited, but instead his eyes fell on Kaelag. 

Kaelag licked at the gap in his gums, the tip of his tongue appearing through the scar in his lips as he did it. He was taller than Geralt, but only just, and he was thin-chested with limbs that had the stretched look of a creature still growing into them. His neck-ruff hadn’t yet grown the long tuft that adults had, either.

“How old are you?” Geralt asked before he could think better of it. 

For a moment, Kaelag just looked at Geralt out of one eye. Geralt wondered if Kaelag would refuse to answer him just like Geralt himself refused to answer Regis much of the time. But then a soft voice spoke into Geralt's mind. 

**_I am fourteen,_ ** Kaelag said, and despite the comparative gentleness with which the words were delivered, it still raised the hairs on Geralt’s nape and arms and pulled something tight in his chest. 

Forcing his face to stay blank, Geralt nodded in acknowledgement. Kaelag was only two years older than Ciri had been when Geralt had first encountered her. But Kaelag's wound almost certainly came from the war. Had Kaelag done something to deserve it? Suddenly Geralt found he wanted to know if he was living with an enemy combatant, even a former one.

“Dettlaff adopted you more recently?” Geralt pressed. 

**_Two years ago,_ ** Kaelag replied. **_Why do you ask?_ **

The scar was definitely from the war, then. Geralt thought carefully about how to approach the next question, not wanting to scare off his quarry.

“Witchers like to brag to each other about their scars,” he said, which was true enough. “So I was wondering how you got yours.”

Kaelag made a face, his strange mouth twisting. 

**_You can tell another witcher did it, can’t you._ **

“Yeah,” Geralt said quietly, relenting. “How else would you have gotten it.”

 **_You want to finish the job he started?_ ** Kaelag asked, sounding angry and frightened now. **_Regis promised me you wouldn’t. Isn’t that part of the treaty?_ **

“No,” Geralt denied, wrong-footed now. “No, I mean, yes it’s part of the--I wouldn’t, witchers aren’t supposed to attack anyone who doesn’t attack us or humans. Or elves, theoretically, though they mostly deal with their monster problems on their own.”

 **_They told me that you probably know him,_ ** Kaelag snapped. And then, to Geralt’s absolute shock, Kaelag transformed into Letho of Gulet. 

He leaned back in the chair, widened his posture, and gave Geralt a challenging look. 

Except for the scar--Kaelag’s scar twisted down the right side of Letho’s face--so many of the details were right. Those were Letho’s deep-set, cunning golden eyes, that was the distinctive V-shaped scar on his shaved scalp, there lay the veins on his thick biceps, and Kaelag had even replicated the splattering of acid scars that speckled and discolored his shoulders and arms. 

Except the more Geralt kept looking, he realized that other things were wrong beyond the face scar. Kaelag had only been wearing a sort of skirt to begin with, so his version of Letho was also bare-chested. But the replica’s chest lacked both nipples and scars--which Geralt realized was probably because Kaelag hadn’t seen Letho shirtless, only bare-armed. Probably he hadn't seen _any_ human chests if he didn't know to include nipples. 

“You--you know how to turn into him,” Geralt remarked stupidly. “Why do you--”

“Kaelag!” someone barked from the door of the library, and when Geralt turned, Dettlaff stood there, the sclera of his eyes black as dark spots bloomed along the sides of his face. Regis stood beside him, his own eyes wide but still human. 

Almost too quick to see, Kaelag subsided into his natural shape. From what Geralt could interpret of his facial expression, he looked both embarrassed and resentful, glancing between Regis and Dettlaff with one eye. 

Dettlaff and Regis looked at each other, and then Dettlaff held out one hand to Kaelag, who went to Dettlaff with some reluctance. They left the room. 

For several seconds, Regis and Geralt regarded one another in tense silence. Geralt suppressed the absurd impulse to make excuses for himself like one of the Bastion boys caught hoarding food in his room.

Finally Regis sighed. He crossed to the shelves, tapping his long nails (claws, really) on the spines of the books there. 

“I should have expected this,” he said, sounding tired. “Kaelag used to do that all the time--he’d turn into Letho and say disturbing things to all of us about how he’d make bombs to blow us up in our sleep and then harvest our corpses for potion ingredients. I should have had a conversation with you about this earlier.”

“It’s my fault,” Geralt confessed, mind racing. “I asked him about his scar. I shouldn’t have.”

Regis grimaced. “Professional curiosity, perhaps?” His gaze fell heavy on Geralt’s face. Geralt met it, refusing to back down. “He hasn’t got all his powers yet, just transformation and mind-speaking. Does that make him an easier target than me?”

“I wouldn’t hurt him. He’s just a--just a child,” Geralt said, tripping over the word. “I know that.”

It was Regis who looked away. He wiped one bare fingertip through the dust on the shelves, looked at it, and then brushed his gloved hands off against each other. He and Dettlaff nearly always wore fingerless gloves, even indoors. Many of the Deathless Geralt had encountered had worn them, in fact. 

Geralt made a note to himself that he would clean in here later.

“We considered sending him away before you arrived,” Regis said in a tight voice, “having him stay with some of Dettlaff’s friends in the south. But that upset him even worse. This is his home. But for the future, so that you understand...” Regis drew a deep breath. The cloth of his gloves stretched over his knuckles as he tensed and then released one hand. 

“Letho bombed the house where Kaelag and his father lived," Regis said, low as if he did not want to be overheard. He shook his head, mouth twisting. "His father had, to my knowledge, killed more than enough people both during the war and before it to merit a witcher’s attention. But Kaelag is not cruel by nature despite the ways he has acted out his trauma with us. And from what he’s told us, he was already struggling with the fact that his father was killing and eating the people in the town where they lived. But Letho made Kaelag's distress and confusion much worse.” Regis gestured at his lip or maybe nose. “After the bomb killed Kaelag's father and half-killed him, his tooth was apparently hanging out of his face by a thread of flesh. Letho came up to him and pulled it off him, saying it’d be good to sell or use in potions even though Kaelag himself was too small to bother with killing yet." Regis turned a hard stare on Geralt, as if daring him to say something wrong. "As you might imagine, that experience had something of an impact on Kaelag.”

Geralt respected Letho, but learning this didn’t surprise him. Geralt himself had learned how to improve his dimeritium bombs from the southern witchers. He’d blown apart vampires in just the same way as Letho had destroyed Kaelag's father. A well-aimed dimeritium bomb could shred even a Deathless for long enough that they could be beheaded and pacified. That was how Geralt had taken down one of the two Deathless whose heads he had to his name. 

When Geralt nodded in acknowledgment, Regis seated himself across the table from Geralt, now tapping his nails on the table. A nervous habit, perhaps, just as in humans. 

“I know, absolutely and with no doubt, that my people are at fault for the war,” Regis stated then. Geralt stared, face carefully blank. “They began it and would have continued their brutality until they had complete dominion. What they did was monstrous, and it required the intervention of monster hunters. But...”

Geralt waited for the catch. For the statement that vampires had some excuse, and they couldn’t be held responsible for their actions. 

Regis just looked small and tired now. “Kaelag and others like him aren’t at fault,” he continued, and Geralt relaxed because that wasn’t as bad as he’d expected. “He may well do this again to try to get a rise out of you. Or he might do something else. You have every right to be angry at vampires in general, including me, but please do not take that out on Kaelag. Can you accept that?”

Outside of the windows, clouds skidded by as Geralt watched. The rain of last night had vanished this morning while Geralt had cleaned. 

He knew that he had erred in prodding Kaelag as he had. This was not a moment for him to be silent and ignore Regis. He owed...something, here.

“Yes,” he agreed. “I accept that.” Having gotten that much out, he thought about his next words. 

“I understand what it’s like to look at your own people with the awareness of how brutal they are,” he admitted at last, with a feeling that he was doing something terribly wrong. He couldn’t look at Regis as he said this, but even out of the corner of his eye, he saw Regis’s gaze turn wide and fixed. "Six or seven children out of every ten were killed right away by the process required to make witchers, and more later on in our training too. Those of us in my cohort who survived the first Trial, we’d joke about how the dead ones must’ve been weak, soft. Not as good as us."

He grimaced, remembering how for decades even before Ciri's arrival in their lives, Lambert had shouted and argued with him and Eskel about the brutality of the Trials. It had come up more and more during the war, as Lambert’s despair at the life into which he’d been forced grew worse and worse. Geralt traced the shape of a wolf medallion on the tabletop, thinking about of the defiant look in Kaelag's eyes when he'd taken Letho's shape.

"It was what the trainers told us to help us cope with the deaths," Geralt continued. "It was mean and stupid but it was the only thing we had to help us deal with what had happened.” He gestured at the doorway where Kaelag had gone with Dettlaff. “Sometimes when you’ve been hurt, the only thing you know how to do is pretend you deserved it, or act more like the people who hurt you, or both. Makes it...well. Not easier, not really, but people keep doing it anyway.”

He let out a long breath, slow enough that it made almost no noise. It didn’t help. He took another. 

Regis seemed, understandably, to be uncertain how to respond. Geralt often had that effect; he opened his mouth and killed any conversation dead. It was part of why he tried not to talk much. 

“Thank you for saying that,” Regis murmured at last. “It’s...I didn’t expect it. I didn’t think you’d understand.”

Geralt shrugged. He rose from his seat, wincing at the grinding of the chair's feet over the stone floor. 

“Clearly not gonna have language lessons today,” he said, and retreated before either of them could say anything worse.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning: this chapter contains a very brief description of sexual assault.

Geralt waited until dinner, when he knew neither of the Deathless would be around, to start cleaning the library. It was just something to do, he told himself, it wasn’t like it was some sort of apology. It needed doing, so someone would ask him to get to it sooner or later. 

Wiping down the tables seemed like a good place to start, so he began there. Once the tables were clean, he could take the books off the ground, dust them, and stack them on a clean surface. 

He’d done this in the Kaer Morhen library once as a teenager. It had been a punishment for something Geralt no longer remembered. His instructors had known that even though he was angry, he wouldn’t act out with the books. He liked reading too much. 

Once Geralt had finished cleaning the books and the shelves, he realized that since he already had all the books stacked on the tables and floor, he might as well organize them. He used Kaer Morhen’s strategy of grouping them by subject matter and title within that. It filled his attention for a time and that was good. 

Distantly he could hear people--vampires, he couldn’t forget where he was--moving around the house. The katakans were awake now, while Dettlaff and Regis would be going to sleep soon. 

By the time Geralt finished his work, it was late. He slunk back to his room. 

He looked at the bed. He knew he wouldn’t sleep. He left his room again. 

By the time he made it down to the dock, where the wind whipped at his clothes and drove the spray from the waves into his eyes and hair and everything else, he was tired. He stood for a while anyway, looking at the seemingly endless black horizon of the ocean. He wondered if there was land out there somewhere or if it was as limitless as it appeared. People in Skellige said there was a whole other continent out there. But Nilfgaard said there wasn't. 

By the time he at last returned to his room, he didn’t smell like himself anymore. He smelled like saltwater and late summer. He crawled into bed and covered his face with his hair to keep himself from his own stink. 

Sometime around dawn he awoke to the pups clambering up the side of the bed. He opened up the blankets and let them in. For about a minute they shuffled around, settling into the warm spaces between the covers and his body before finally the shy one settled on his shoulder and the bold one on the mattress between his arm and his side. Within moments he was asleep again. 

He dreamed. A group of his friends stood in a group of vampires. Remus and Coen were near the front, and Geralt could see their faces looking at him, asking him to do something to save them. As soon as he saw them, he realized that he had to intervene  _ now _ or it would be too late. Something unspeakable was going to happen to them. 

Three huge, powerful katakans were nearby, and Geralt tried to reach Coen and Remus but the three katakans blocked him. They stood in his way until all Geralt could smell was vampire musk, all he could see was the ropy muscles of their bodies and the thick fur of their ruffs.

“Please,” Geralt asked, trying to be polite. “Please, you have to let them go.”

**_Why would we do that?_ ** one of the katakans demanded into Geralt’s mind. 

Geralt shuddered at that unwelcome touch inside him, but he shook himself, meeting their eyes. 

“They’re my family! You have no right to my family,” Geralt told them. Surely that would convince them?

**_Not by blood,_ ** the katakans laughed at him.  **_They haven’t given their blood to you, they’re not bonded to you, so they’re ours._ **

Geralt’s chest grew tight with panic. He couldn’t breathe or think, all he knew was that he had to get them back--if the vampires took them now, there was a place the vampires would take them that he couldn’t ever reach and he would never see them again. Between the katakans, Geralt could see that Coen and Remus were already deep into that unreachable place, and Lambert was further and further away with every moment. 

There were severed limbs lying on the ground at Geralt’s feet. Blood had started to congeal on the soles of his boots and made the ground sticky.

“They’re all I have!” Geralt begged. “Please, I don’t have anything else to give you in exchange!”

One of the katakans moved close to Geralt, bending down to sniff at his neck. Its long hand wrapped around the back of his thigh, two claws slipping between his legs. 

**_Yes you do,_ ** it told him. He tried to shrink away from the touch, but--

Shrill screeching awoke him. Blinking into the pillow, Geralt’s mind couldn’t make sense of the noise, which was bitterly high-pitched and stabbing through his ears and into his skull. He couldn’t breathe, his chest was too tight to breathe--

Something touched his face and he reared back, scrabbling in the bedclothes. A shape in the darkness resolved into the tiny face of one of the pups, mouth open to reveal its needle-point fangs as it screamed at him. The other was cringing at the foot of the bed. 

“Shit,” he swore as he suddenly realized what had happened. He’d been having a nightmare while the pups were in bed with him, and they’d felt his panic through his skin--possibly they’d even gotten something of the dream itself? The thought made him sick. 

Seeing that he was finally awake, the braver of the two grabbed at his bare arm. He collapsed back onto the mattress as the overwhelming image of Dettlaff, huge and gentle, filled his mind. The pup imagined Geralt going to Dettlaff and being held and stroked by him--but in the pup's mind, Dettlaff’s hands were big enough to encompass Geralt's whole body, as they would be to the pup. 

The opening of his bedroom door told him he hadn’t been the only one awakened by the pups’ noises of distress. Both Dettlaff and Regis stood there, eyes flashing in the darkness. 

“What happened?” Dettlaff growled, his voice raw and clearly well on the way to transforming. He went right to the shyer of the pups, picking it up off the bed and cradling it to his bare chest. It calmed immediately, and Dettlaff blinked down at it. “Oh.”

Which was when Geralt realized that both Dettlaff and Regis were naked. Not just naked, either, but smeared with pungent fluids. Geralt blinked at them for a second before realizing what those fluids had to be. Even though it didn’t smell like anything so human as semen, there was a quality to it that was nonetheless recognizable. 

Well that explained why the pups didn’t just sleep with them. 

“Nightmare,” Geralt explained, perhaps unnecessarily. He forced himself to take a deep breath, stretching out the tightness along his sternum, but he was already doing better now he wasn’t in the grip of the dream. “They were against my skin when it started.”

“Oh dear,” Regis said. “That is a problem I hadn’t anticipated. Though now I think of it, it should have been obvious.”

“They shouldn’t sleep in here in the future,” Geralt said, shocked by how painful it was to say. “I’ll just brace my door closed.”

Dettlaff bent to pick up the other pup. It went to him readily enough, but stared back at Geralt, ears perked. Geralt wondered if it could hear his heartbeat slowing. 

Dettlaff let out that startling chirping noise again, clearly something he did only with the pups. Then his eyes rose to Geralt’s. 

“Are you all right?” Dettlaff asked. 

Geralt stared at him, startled to be asked. 

“Go back to bed,” Geralt told him. “I’ll brace the door.”

They left. Regis lingered on the threshold for a moment as if wanting to say something. Geralt waved him away. 

In the empty room, which now smelled strongly of vampire, Geralt knew he would not sleep again. He donned clothes and socks and sat with his back against the door to meditate until his mind cleared.


	9. Chapter 9

When Geralt slowly emerged from meditation, he found that his mind had crystallized several things into knowledge. 

First, that he was in no real danger here from anything except boredom and loneliness. If he hadn’t been attacked for potentially endangering Regis and Dettlaff's children twice in rapid succession, then they would not attack him for anything. Nothing more reliably elicited violence from a creature than threatening its young. All Regis and Dettlaff had done was to go dark-eyed and stern at him. 

Second, that Regis and Dettlaff fucked often enough that the pups were accustomed to not sleeping in their room at certain times. Apparently sex for pleasure between mated individuals was another commonality between their species. 

Third, that Geralt believed that neither Regis or Dettlaff would rape him. He remembered the agonizing conversation with Regis about the bond, and how it made them attracted to him--but he also remembered Regis’s expression of revulsion at the idea that he might fuck Geralt when he smelled so miserable.

And fourth, that without the threat of physical and sexual violence, that Geralt’s body meant to go back to its usual bothersome state of being  _ incessantly _ ready to fuck.

Over the last two decades (three? Was it three yet?) of his life since meeting Jaskier, Geralt had talked to the bard enough to know that levels of both romantic desire and libido varied greatly from individual to individual. Jaskier ranked himself on the higher end of things, based on his own experiences with the astonishing variety of people he’d slept with. Yet even he had been outstripped by Geralt. And, indeed, by most witchers Geralt knew. 

The high libido of witchers was such a known fact among their ranks that methods for keeping prurient thoughts out of one’s mind while in public (to prevent displays that would further degrade the already-tarnished witcher name) had been a key aspect of their training in meditation. One of the first alchemical formulae young witchers learned after the Trials was for slick, to keep them from injuring each other with over-enthusiastic rutting. And before a witcher was sent out on the Path for the first time, he was sternly taught how to mind his strength so he wouldn’t harm or terrify non-witcher lovers.

As every witcher knew, stress suppressed both appetite and libido. But witchers always recovered quickly, in every way. And before the war, when witchers had wintered in Kaer Morhen and thus had access to privacy and comfortable spaces, a normal day meant wanting to get off probably three separate times. 

For a week before coming here, and indeed for most of the war, Geralt’s desire had deadened, numbing like every other part of him in anticipation of a fate far worse than simple death. Until today, Geralt had felt nothing but little glimmers of interest, like glimpses of something shimmering through murky water. But now...

Now his stupid godsdamned mutated body was going to start responding to  _ everything _ and the vampires would be able to smell it if he got himself off. The scent of his seed would waft through the halls like a beacon signaling to everyone in the house exactly what he had done. 

Even now, the scent of sex from  _ another damn species _ was becoming enough to evoke heat at the pit of his belly and make him wonder more seriously what it might be like to fuck a vampire. Regis had indicated that probably both of them would be interested because of the bond, and this fact became much more interesting to a brain and body that constantly wanted sex with very little discrimination about who from.

That thought made a small, terrible thought occur to Geralt, though: what if  _ he _ somehow took advantage of  _ them _ because of what the bond made them feel?

But it didn’t matter. He had no intention of acting on his thoughts, no matter what his idiotic prick liked to think. 

Geralt closed his eyes for just another minute longer, still unwilling to face the world in which he found himself. 

Then he got up, went to his bed, stripped his braies off, and took himself in hand. 

At first his mind just wandered to all the usual things he thought of. Kneeling at Yen’s feet, licking her until she came, and then being allowed to jerk off as she stroked herself to another climax with his face so close that her fingers brushed his nose and all he could smell was her. His feet up on Eskel’s shoulders as Eskel fucked into him, rubbing him just right inside. Eskel pulling Geralt down by his hair until Geralt couldn’t breathe, throat full to bursting and eyes watering. Being commanded to stay still so Yen could ride him however she liked, and the way she dug her sharp nails into the meat of his chest in punishment every time he couldn’t help but move. 

Geralt came once, but as was usual for a witcher, that wasn’t enough. 

Just before he hit his second peak, however, a thought rose unbidden in his mind--the memory of Dettlaff’s exquisite care and attention as he held the pups. Geralt’s arousal warped and mixed it into an image of Dettlaff riding Geralt just like Yen did, leaning forward to whisper something soft in Rasna into Geralt’s ear. 

Afterward, Geralt  rose, going over to the pitcher of wash-water and wetting a cloth to wipe himself clean. Embarrassment rose hot through him and he could see the blush blooming on his own chest. All he could hope was that the vampires would understand enough of human propriety not to mention what they could smell on him. 

In the hopes of airing himself out to some degree, he went for a walk in the woods, returning before noon. Possibly there would be no language lesson today, but if there was, he did not want to be even more rude by missing it. 

When he arrived in the library, Regis and Dettlaff were both there. Kaelag wouldn’t look at him, but Regis turned a bright grin on Geralt that showed off his fang-like front teeth. Normally, Geralt realized, Regis smiled close-mouthed to hide them. 

“Did you do this?” Regis asked, gesturing at the clean and organized shelves. “I mean of course you did, who else!  _ Thank _ you, Geralt, I’ve tried to get the library into some sort of order but I’ve always been too distracted and indecisive. It’s wonderful not to have books all over the floor.”

Shrugging diffidently, Geralt cast a sideways glance at Kaelag. The young vampire was ignoring all three of them, all his attention on his translation. Geralt suspected he was either embarrassed or angry, but he didn’t know the boy well enough to tell. 

For a moment Regis moved close to Geralt and Geralt thought he might be kissed or embraced. A thrill of something like panic went through him at the idea, but all Regis did was lay a single gloved hand on Geralt’s shoulder. Geralt’s awful traitor of a brain supplied the image of kissing Regis, of curling the tip of his tongue behind those slanting teeth. 

Blanking his mind in the way he’d been taught, Geralt pushed the thought away. When Dettlaff gestured at a chair, Geralt seated himself, happy to be distracted. Regis settled himself at a table nearby to read.

At their table, Dettlaff laid out a small folio of drawings, clearly done by himself. From it, he pulled loose sketches of swords, horses and saddles, and then last, a series of images of humans in states of dress and undress. Not until Dettlaff began naming parts of the swords using the drawings did Geralt understand the purpose of the images. 

He wondered if Dettlaff had made them just for the purpose of teaching Geralt. It seemed likely that he had, given that they were loose sketches done on the backs of other images. Still, the idea of Dettlaff going out of his way to do something for Geralt was flattering.

When Dettlaff got to the images of people, Geralt’s awful brain again decided to take this to the worst possible place. It supplied the image of himself naked while Dettlaff taught him how to pronounce the parts of his own body in Rasna. Perhaps Dettlaff would not allow him to come unless he rolled the R’s correctly...

Geralt forced himself to stop, but he knew the image would come back to haunt him later. At least he got through the lesson without embarrassing himself. 

Finally Regis and Dettlaff stood to leave. Geralt stood too, but Kaelag grabbed at his sleeve. 

**_Wait,_ ** he requested.

Despite the shiver of disgust this mental intrusion got from Geralt, he seated himself again, glancing at Regis and Dettlaff, who just exchanged a look and left. 

Something about that quiet demonstration of trust took Geralt’s breath away. Even after the mishaps, that they would just walk out and leave him with their child was staggering. 

Now he had to not fuck this up. 

He expected Kaelag to launch right into recrimination and anger, but instead he sat, hunched and small, with his ears somehow looking bigger than ever compared to his body. 

“Was there...something you wanted?” Geralt asked at last. 

**_I’m sorry,_ ** Kaelag said at last, and Geralt’s brows scrunched together in confusion. 

“It’s fine,” Geralt replied. “You didn’t hurt me. I should apologize to you, actually. I upset you. I shouldn’t have asked what I did.”

Kaelag’s heels thumped against the legs of his chairs, his claws ticking on the floorboards as he swept his feet back and forth nervously. His ears folded back against his head and then snapped forward again as if self-conscious. 

**_Would you kill me if you had the chance?_ ** Kaelag asked then. 

Geralt had years of practice in not making faces when people said bizarre or offensive things to him, so he kept his thoughts out of his expression. Inside, however, Geralt cringed. He was keenly aware that even two weeks ago he would not have done so. 

“No,” Geralt told the boy. “Witchers should only kill creatures that are harmful to people.”

**_How did you get the scar on your face?_ **

“Cockatrice,” Geralt answered at once, because it was only fair. “In Spalla.”

**_I can’t talk out loud,_ ** Kaelag informed him then, seemingly apropos of nothing.  **_I should be able to, but I can’t. Regis says that there's nothing medically wrong with my brain, but that I might take a while to recover in other ways. But I was bad at it even before the bomb. Now I can’t at all._ **

Unsure how to respond, Geralt just nodded. 

**_You flinch slightly every time I talk to you this way,_ ** Kaelag said then, and Geralt understood why Kaelag was talking about his telepathy--he was apologizing again, in a way.  **_Just slightly. I think most people wouldn’t notice. Just a very slight pulling back of your head, and you try to hide it with other movements. It was more obvious yesterday, though._ **

“Yeah,” Geralt acknowledged. He wondered how honest he should be. Part of him wanted to leave this conversation, because it was hard and because Kaelag was a vampire. But the rest of Geralt knew he’d stay. “I’ve only ever had vampires talk to me this way when they were trying to kill me.”

Kaelag nodded. 

**_I’ll never be able to leave this house,_ ** Kaelag told him then, and the despair in the words took Geralt’s breath away.  **_There’s no place for us in this world. That’s part of why other vampires attacked people to begin with, because they were tired of hiding and faking and not belonging anywhere. But all they did was make it so that the rest of us_ ** **can’t** **_belong anywhere._ **

Geralt blinked. He had often wondered during the war what the purpose of the destruction could possibly be. No demands had ever been made, and the violence had been so gleeful that it had been easy to assume the motivation was malice, pure and simple. It was almost a relief to believe that the motivation had been something so...human. Humans fought wars for stupid, selfish reasons too.

The response to this came more naturally. 

“Witchers don’t really belong anywhere either,” he said, and Kaelag lifted his head and narrowed his eyes at him. Clearly he was skeptical that anyone who looked like Geralt could possibly be dealing with the same thing as a vampire who looked like him. “Before the war, people would stare and spit at me most times I went through a town. I was in my seventies before I met a human who really wanted to be friends with me. And even now, most humans think that the only thing a witcher is good for is dying so humans don’t have to.”

For the space of several heartbeats they regarded each other. Then Kaelag said,  **_You’re really not reassuring at all. Except by being somehow even worse at talking to people than I am._ **

This startled a laugh out of Geralt. He rubbed a hand over his face, turning away to look at one of the shelves. But that just reminded him of Regis, and how grateful he’d been. Geralt hadn’t tidied the library for Regis, exactly, he’d done it because it needed doing. But he was pleased that Regis liked it.

“That’s fair,” Geralt admitted. “I never claimed to be good at it.”

When Kaelag’s eyes narrowed again Geralt wondered if he’d said something wrong a second time. But then, with slow precision, Kaelag changed into Geralt himself. 

It was nothing like a doppler’s imitation, which was always exact and complete in every way. From what Geralt remembered of his own face, it wasn’t a bad representation, but Kaelag had exaggerated his nose a bit and actually made him somehow handsomer, jaw squarer and cheekbones higher. Again the bare chest really gave away the game: it was unscarred, lacking nipples, and missing the fuzz of white hair.

But somehow the thing that took Geralt’s breath away was seeing that terrible scar stretching down his own face. It made him miss Eskel like the loss of a limb. He gritted his teeth, trying to breathe around the pain in his chest. 

Something of it must have shown in his face or body. Kaelag subsided into his own skin again.

**_Sorry,_ ** he apologized again.  **_Regis says I shouldn’t do things like that, but I just can’t help but be curious._ **

“It’s okay,” Geralt reassured, but he swallowed, too, feeling shaken. “You just...reminded me of my best friend. He has a scar just like yours. I thought of it when I first saw you, too, but something about seeing it on my face...”

**_Is he a witcher too?_ ** Kaelag asked, ears perking with interest. It was easier to read the ears than the face; the inherent shape of a katakan’s face was so different from human that subtler expressions were not very legible to Geralt yet.

“Yeah. I’ve known him since I was four years old,” Geralt said. He shifted in his chair. His longing was so intense it almost felt like nausea. He needed to change the subject. “I have another friend who teaches at Oxenfurt. If the war is really over, I could write to him, see if they’re accepting students. Or if he knows anyone else who would be interested in tutoring you. Not that Regis and Dettlaff aren’t great, but it can be nice to learn from someone new sometimes.”

Kaelag leaned in a little closer.  **_You could teach me._ **

That brought Geralt up short. He hadn’t even considered that idea. 

“I only really know how to teach alchemy and monster biology,” he said, feeling awkward. He also knew how to teach both unarmed and bladed combat, but with Kaelag all that would accomplish would be to train a vampire to fight witchers. That, Geralt refused to do. 

**_I want to know more of what witchers know,_ ** Kaelag said with startling intensity.  **_So pick one to teach me first. Or we can do both._ **

Settling back in his chair, Geralt considered this. It didn’t take a genius to intuit that this interest was related to Kaelag’s experience with Letho, and possibly also the stress of Geralt himself coming to stay in Kaelag’s new home. But then, people had coped in worse ways than learning new skills and knowledge. 

“We can start with some basic ways to identify species,” Geralt agreed carefully. “Anything else, I have to ask your parents about.”

Kaelag’s eyes narrowed.  **_Do you think it’s possible for a vampire to be a witcher?_ **

Geralt’s nape prickled a warning. 

“No,” he said gently. “Being a witcher means being not quite human but not quite anything else, either. No one will ever change your body like mine was changed. But given that your family has kept all of Nazair free of monsters for over a century, I think it would be quite possible for you to become a monster hunter for hire.”

Even admitting that much felt like a betrayal of his brethren. But Geralt couldn’t just refuse the teenager, either. Geralt knew what it was like to be young and frightened and desperate, with death and violence looming so close in your past. And besides, teenagers were prone to whims. What fascinated Kaelag today might bore or disgust him next week. 

Kaelag nodded. He took out his notebook, turning to a different page from his translation work. Then he sharpened his pencil with one claw and gathered the shavings into a tidy pile at the end of the table.

The rest of the afternoon passed in teaching Kaelag the differences between draconid species. Kaelag took dutiful notes in a strong, clear handwriting.

Before dinner Geralt extricated himself to go in search of Dettlaff and Regis. He found them in the studio, where Dettlaff was just finishing another painting.

“Geralt,” Regis acknowledged. “What brings you to us?”

“Kaelag asked me for lessons on how to be a witcher,” he said bluntly. Regis’s eyebrows went up, and Dettlaff sighed. “I told him he couldn’t actually be a witcher, but I didn’t know how to refuse him completely. So I taught him about draconids. Wasn’t sure how to proceed after that, though.”

“Teach him,” Dettlaff said. The sharpness of his words sounded almost angry--but his face looked soft. He was difficult for Geralt to read. “If he wants to learn, then teach him.”

Geralt waited in case Regis would disagree with this in some way. But he didn’t, his regard open as he looked at Geralt. 

“All right. But I also thought...” Geralt hesitated over saying what he’d thought, though, worrying that this, too, would be a betrayal to his friends. “I don’t want to presume. But if you wanted, I could write to someone I know who teaches music and literature at Oxenfurt. See about educating Kaelag in other ways. My friend might be willing to do it himself, or he could suggest someone who would be willing to take a vampire student.”

This got Geralt a warm smile. “That would be wonderful,” Regis praised. “Please do! I think music would be very good for him to learn.”

**

When the time for dinner arrived, Geralt took himself to the family dining room. At the sight of the room full of vampire faces, a tingle of reflexive distress went over his skin. But he ignored it, seating himself quietly between Dettlaff and Kaelag. 

For a while the meal seemed to go as normal. But just as Rufus finished eating and was about to leave, Betta, the bruxa who helped do much of the cooking, stood up. 

“Caileis and I have an announcement,” she said in a loud voice. The other vampires and Geralt all turned toward her. At her side, Caileis looked extraordinarily grumpy, eyes narrowed and ears curved back. But Betta set a hand on Caileis’s shoulder before saying with a toothy grin, “Caileis and I bonded last night!”

The room immediately descended into chaos. Calliope shrieked, so excited that her volume and pitch edged into the brutal screech which alps and bruxae used to stun opponents. Geralt and several of the katakans winced and Calliope slapped a hand over her mouth. But it hardly mattered by then, because everyone else was talking at once in a jumble of congratulations and I-told-you-so’s. 

Geralt could not help his response to the pandemonium, forming a minor Quen before the rest of his mind could intervene. Kaelag looked at the golden ripple of the shield with interest. He didn’t seem nearly as excited as all the other vampires about the news. He poked at Geralt’s forearm with one claw and the Quen stopped him just above the skin. 

“Not excited about this?” Geralt asked the young vampire, waving toward the other end of the table. 

Kaelag’s expression of teenaged ennui translated even across species.  **_Oh, everyone should have seen this coming. They’ve been together for ages, but Caileis thinks nobody will ever love her because she’s so angry all the time, which of course just makes her angrier. It’s why she got pregnant last year. She throws herself at everyone who will have her. And Betta thought Caileis didn’t really love her because Caileis is so scared that she’s unlovable that she doesn’t show she cares. But then you came and Caileis has been so mad that a human got bonded before she did that she’s been ranting about it all the time. It was only a matter of time before Betta realized Caileis was actually upset because she wanted to bond with Betta but wouldn’t ask._ **

Geralt tried to disguise his smile by covering his mouth with one hand and pretending to fuss over his beard. 

Everyone else stood clustered around the two newlywed vampires. Caileis looked absolutely furious. Betta was beaming.

“You sure? Caileis seems...”

Kaelag sighed, rolling his eyes.  **_She wants attention so badly but she doesn’t know what to do when she gets it. And anger is how she always responds when she doesn’t know what to do._ **

This got a snort from Geralt. That made Caileis sound just like Lambert. 

“Have higher vampires ever bonded with outsiders before?” Geralt asked, now curious. 

**_It’s not even possible, really,_ ** Kaelag responded, and he sounded angry now.  **_I mean it didn’t work on you. So it doesn’t matter anyway. For the rest of us, we’re gonna be stuck here alone forever. We’re trapped in this world where everyone hates us. Betta and Caileis are happy because they found each other, but they’re both over a hundred! And Regis and Dettlaff didn't find each other till they were both over three hundred! I don’t want a bond, it sounds awful to me, but I don’t even have friends!_ **

“Oh,” Geralt said, and then wasn’t sure how to follow up afterward. He almost wanted to say that bonding  _ had _ worked on him, but he didn’t want to tell anyone that. Plus, even if it worked on him, that might well be because he was a witcher. Things always worked differently in their bodies than in humans or even elves. And even beyond that, he only knew that it had worked one way, which was apparently a format of bonding generally considered exploitative or taboo. “Well, shit.”

It had never occurred to Geralt before today that some of the vampires here might feel lonely too. The human locals were unusually open-minded, but that was apparently without having to be confronted by what the vampires looked like in their natural forms. And for those like Calliope who couldn’t hold human forms very well...

**_You’re really not comforting at all,_ ** Kaelag complained. 

“Not what I was trained for, no,” Geralt said. Then he added, “It’ll just piss you off if I tell you that you’re only fourteen, won’t it.”

**_Obviously._ **

“Ok, I won’t say it then.” But he thought for a moment. “You’re good at appearing human, though, so if you wanted to go out in the world, you could. And it’s easier to meet people through work that makes you spend prolonged time around them. Like Regis with his doctoring. If you took up some sort of trade that people need--”

**_Yeah, that’s why Regis and Dettlaff are educating me,_ ** Kaelag said morosely.  **_But I don’t want to pretend to be human._ **

Letting down his Quen, Geralt watched as Dettlaff embraced Caileis. She was still glowering, but now Geralt knew what to look for, he could see she was happy, too. Regis was embracing Betta, whose fangs were on constant display because of how much she was smiling. 

Geralt was used to being on the outside looking in, his own experience too different or too unwelcome for moments like this. But Kaelag was too young to have developed any kind of defense against the isolation. 

Kaelag’s remark made Geralt remember some of the witchers he’d met in the war. Geralt had met more witchers from other schools than ever before in his life as the southern schools came north to aid in the fight, and violence made it safer for witchers to travel in small groups than alone. Which meant that he’d discovered that some of the witchers from the Cat and Viper schools pretended to be human. They wore dark glasses, dressed in armor that wasn’t obviously designed for witchers, and carried only one of their swords at a time. Curious, Geralt had asked them about it. Outside of negotiating witcher contracts, when they had to take their glasses off, they said that the disguise gave them better lives. People didn’t spit at them or overcharge them or refuse them service, except for rare moments when someone got close and nosy enough to see through their glasses. 

Geralt hadn’t been sure how to feel about it. Part of him believed that it was part of a witcher’s job to be visible so that even illiterate people, who couldn't write in order to post contracts, could come to them for help. Some of the work Geralt himself had done had been for people who had approached him because he  _ looked _ like a witcher. What had all those other children died for if not to create witchers who walked the Path and  _ did the work? _

But another part of him had been tired of the Path even before the war. He hated most of the people for whom he risked his life. It hurt to be treated as he was. That part of him thought it would be a relief to be able to take a break from that and be invisible just for a little while. It was tempting to imagine hiding what he was and becoming just any other mercenary for hire. 

“Yeah,” Geralt said at last. “Yeah.”

When Kaelag got up to quietly slip away, Geralt left with him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A vampire and a witcher talk about 'passing privilege' and how often the ability to hide vital parts of you so people don't treat you like shit actually doesn't feel like much of a privilege for those who can do it.
> 
> Also, Geralt has immense guilt, but that's nothing new.


	10. Chapter 10

“Do you know where the babies go during the day?” Geralt asked Kaelag when it looked like Kaelag was going to leave to be on his own. 

With a look of surprise, Kaelag raised one claw to point upwards. **_They sleep in Regis and Dettlaff’s bed, usually._ **

With a nod and a thank you, Geralt parted from Kaelag. He gazed at the staircase, wanting to see the pups again but not daring to intrude on such a private space. Would they even want to see him again after what had happened?

Having little else to do, Geralt retreated to his room with some books. He left his door open in case the pups were willing to see him again. But rather than read, he opened his letter-writing kit again. He spread out a sheet of paper, dipped his pen in the ink, and then stared at the blank page. 

How was he supposed to communicate any of his thoughts to Eskel or Yen? If he were to say that he trusted his two contracted husbands, everyone he knew would think he’d been thralled. And if he described how endearing the pups were, or any of the interactions he’d had with or about Kaelag, he would sound like a traitor.

Finally, thinking of his lessons with Kaelag, Geralt settled on writing as though formulating a bestiary entry. It was a format he knew well, and if Eskel (and the others, as these letters would doubtless be shared) made anything of the information, that would be up to them. 

> _Eskel,_
> 
> _Every day here reveals something new about vampires. The bond I have been given by both my hosts is apparently unusual. Normally, they tell me, vampires mutually share their blood with each other to open a 2-way telepathic connection that is culturally of similar significance to marriage. What they have given me is unusual in that it is 1-directional. This sort of half-bond is apparently regarded as a symbol of either allegiance or penitence. All species of higher vampires seem able to bond with all other species, given that I have also witnessed a bond between a katakan and a bruxa._
> 
> _They have no expectation of monogamy, so it seems to be of little concern to them that I am not the first individual to whom they have bonded. They have not asked me to give them my blood to make it an equal bond._
> 
> _Dettlaff has, they tell me, resided here for over a century, with Regis having joined him some thirty years ago. Regis is extremely literate, with a library of several thousand volumes. I know he has read many of them because they contain notes in his handwriting. Dettlaff is an artist of some skill._
> 
> _The local town is fully aware that this is a household of vampires. We have all seen townships that have taken to worshiping or providing offerings to local magical entities of great power. This is the first time, however, that I have ever witnessed a community that seems to instead have ascribed to the belief that vampirism is something embarrassing condition not to be directly named in polite company. Further, they believe that because Dettlaff has protected them for a full century while the rest of the northern kingdoms have descended into slaughter, that some unfathomable local quality such as fresh sea air is responsible for the goodwill of the vampires here._
> 
> _Dettlaff and Regis seem to be the parents of three adopted children, all of them katakans, which indicates that in this group of higher vampires, at least, there is little distinction made between species when forming familial bonds as well as romantic ones._
> 
> _One of the young is a katakan of 14, and given his physical and mental development, I theorize that after a certain age, katakans mature on a timeline at least somewhat similar to humans. He is not of full size, and while he has fully developed his shapeshifting and telepathy skills, he lacks the ability to become invisible. The 2 pups, on the other hand, are vastly different from human babies. They are fully ambulatory with a complete set of fangs. They hunt independently for small prey animals. I have been told to expect that sometime soon they will gain the physical strength to jump far greater distances._
> 
> _While I am not certain, I theorize that the katakan telepathic ability changes with sexual maturity. In the pups, the telepathy is 2-directional but only possible via body-to-body contact. They cannot initiate it from afar or even through my clothes. But we already know that adults cannot actually read minds, only speak or project images into those of others. The teenager does not seem able to read my mind but is able to speak that way._
> 
> _I miss you and all the others. Give my love to Yen._
> 
> _\- Geralt_

That finished, he set to work on his second letter. 

> _Jaskier,_
> 
> _I have a very strange request for you. Would you or any of the teachers you know be willing to tutor a young vampire for pay? He is fourteen and fully literate, with ongoing education in languages and mathematics, but as far as I can tell, he is not being educated in any other subjects. His parents are especially willing for him to learn music. I do not yet know what they might be willing to pay or for what length of time._
> 
> _You are overeager in everything, so listen to me when I say: do not attempt to come here yourself or send some hapless fool here without first consulting me about specifics._
> 
> _\- Geralt_
> 
> _P.S. I hope you are safe and well._

Sealing the letters, Geralt addressed them and laid them out to take with him to the market tomorrow. When he went to bed, it was with a pang that he wedged his door shut with the chair. 

**

Near dawn, Geralt awoke to the sound of scratching and peeping outside his door. The handle rattled and the peeping grew louder when that failed to give the pup entry. 

Rolling eagerly out of bed, Geralt moved the chair away and yanked the door open. The solitary pup outside rushed in and grabbed at his bare calf. 

This time it only made Geralt dizzy as their skin connected. The pup was full of demands to be picked up, and since that was exactly what Geralt wanted, he reached down and lifted it to rest at the top of his chest, its little face close to his. 

It wanted to be taken to bed to sleep. When Geralt shook his head and refused, recalling memories of his nightmare, the pup drooped, ears sagging. It tried to insist again, but Geralt shook his head again. 

“You need to go somewhere else to sleep,” Geralt told it, unsure how to communicate this in images and hoping some of it would be intelligible from his mind. “I’d love to see you while I’m awake, but it’s dangerous to be with me when I’m sleeping.”

This got a series of disconsolate little chirps, so perhaps the pup understood something. 

In an action that was maybe unwise, given the needle-sharp teeth, Geralt pressed his cheek to the pup’s head, lifting one hand to gently stroke its nape. It leaned against his face, grabbing him by one earlobe to hang on. 

But it was tired and its grip was weak, so when Geralt pressed a parting kiss to its little horn nubs and set it down at the door, it only took being told to find its sibling and sleep there before it gave him one final look and then went away down the hall.

Geralt braced the door again and went back to sleep, remembering the small weight against his chest and the softness of its fur against his fingers. 

**

This week Geralt helped Regis hitch the cart to the horse with far less animosity. And when Regis embarked on another of his conversational monologues (this time about the logistics of creating lenses for spectacles) Geralt found the noise less oppressive. One of the katakans, Regis remarked, was quite far-sighted in addition to being light-sensitive. As a result, she had been forced to make a trip to an optometrist some fifty miles away to acquire spectacles that she could use in order to read. Regis had since researched how such lenses worked, purely for his own enjoyment, and now described the process of their construction at some length. 

The way Regis so often filled silences with conversation reminded Geralt of Jaskier. As always, thoughts of his friends sent a sharp pang of absence through Geralt. He found himself wondering, now, if Regis and Jaskier would get along. Perhaps they would detest one another, as people of similar social temperaments sometimes seemed to do. They were, of course, dissimilar in other ways; while Jaskier’s psychology seemed to have been constructed so that he fell in love with half the people he met, some intuition told Geralt that Regis was much more emotionally reserved. 

On their way to town, when they neared the house of the young man and his unhappy sister, Regis paused in his chatter to fiddle with the reins.

“I should call on Carlotta to see how she fares,” he said carefully. “Would you be willing to come in with me? So that you can ask her for yourself how she responded to your tonic.”

For several seconds Geralt considered this request and all it implied: that his presence would be tolerated during such a visit, that Regis believed that Geralt’s opinion and expertise were helpful, and maybe even that he was trying to help Geralt feel welcome here by giving Geralt something to do. It was strange to think it had only been seven days since their first trip to the weekly market.

“Yeah all right,” Geralt said at last, gruffly, and pointedly ignored the way Regis beamed at him. Geralt didn’t know what to do with it. 

When they arrived at the farmhouse, the same young man greeted them. This time, he smiled much more freely. 

“That strange tea you brewed for us has done Carlotta a great service!” he said, eyes shining as he looked between the vampire and the witcher. “She smiled for the first time in months. Can you spare us some more? Only, we ran out in a few days, and I would have come to get it myself, but I’m needed around the house.”

“I should look in on your sister, would you mind us coming in?” Regis asked gently. 

Before they entered the house, Geralt could immediately see why the young man had felt he couldn’t be spared for the two-mile walk each way to and from the manor and his house. While the family did not have a vast herd of milk cows, they had seven and nearly as many calves. There was also a vegetable garden and a coop full of chickens. Geralt knew enough about farms like this one to know that this plus normal housework plus a new baby meant a lot of work. 

Inside, the smell of human milk, soiled diaper, and food all mixed together to become almost overpowering in the close space. There were clear signs that the people who lived here were struggling to keep up with the work. It was a small house, only three rooms, but every bit of it needed tidying.

By one of the windows sat a young woman, heavily freckled, her hair wrapped up in a cloth. Geralt presumed this was Carlotta. Near to her, seated on a small stool in front of a wooden tub full of soapy dishes, sat a man Geralt thought must be her husband. On his chest in a sling was the baby, currently asleep, drool trailing down one fat brown cheek. 

Carlotta turned slowly to look when the door opened. Her face was too thin and dark circles marred her pretty eyes. When Regis entered, Carlotta’s husband stood to welcome Regis with a smile and a handshake. He eyed Geralt with suspicion. 

“This must be the witcher,” he said, in a tone indicating he found this fact unpleasant. He sent Regis a look that said quite plainly, _Why have you brought this into my house?_

“This is Geralt of Rivia,” Regis answered gently, following it with, “he made the tonic for Carlotta. Carlotta, we wondered if we might ask you some questions about how the tonic was for you.”

Her eyes actually had a little more life in them when she looked at Geralt, taking in his strange eyes, scars, and unfortunate pale skin. 

For a moment she seemed to organize her thoughts before she said, “I haven’t felt like a person in a while except when I drank your tea. Tasted awful, though. Would the effect be ruined by honey?”

It took Geralt only a few questions to determine that she wasn’t having any ill-effects from the tonic and neither was her baby. When they left, Carlotta’s husband had warmed enough to actually say farewell to Geralt, and to assent to letting him visit again with more of the mixture.

Geralt was immensely grateful that Regis seemed to sense that Geralt would not want to talk about how good it felt to be useful. Instead, Regis went right on to ramble about the fine qualities of the local species of mandrake and its rich brown color. 

The rest of their trip through town and the market went with relative ease. The people again greeted Regis with warmth and Geralt with mixed fascination and suspicion. But the woman with the horsebite met him with a more friendly air. 

“Would you look at this!” she said, rolling up her sleeve again to show her bite wound looking far less inflamed. “Who knew that battlefield doctoring would be any good for horsebites.”

With that little bit of satisfaction to sustain Geralt through more staring, they finished the rest of their tasks and returned to the estate. 

**

The next day Geralt brought more of the tonic to Carlotta. Later in the week, someone managed to chop two of their fingers off and Regis brought Geralt with him to tend to the wound. Geralt wasn’t needed, Regis was indeed quite a competent surgeon and his fingers flew as he put in the stitches. But it got Geralt outside and gave the people in town another chance to get used to him, he supposed. 

It took another four days for the shyer pup to be willing to seek him out again. Geralt tried to suppress the intensity of his relief when it crept into his room and into his lap as he wrote another letter to his friends. He failed. Thankfully it didn’t seem to mind being cradled and fussed over. 

When it began to grow sleepy and tow Geralt down into somnolence with it, he took it upstairs to where Regis and Dettlaff sat together in the studio. Regis had apparently finished reading the last novel aloud, as this time he held one with a deep green cover. Dettlaff, meanwhile, had begun what Geralt recognized after a moment to be a portrait of Caileis and Betta. Geralt wasn’t sure if he ought to ask about it, but he supposed it might be a belated wedding present, or maybe even a sign of Dettlaff’s approval of the relationship. 

Dettlaff seemed to be finishing the sketch. The pencil upon the stretched canvas made a tiny purring noise as it ran over the uneven surface.

Regis took the pup with a smile when Geralt handed it over. By the time Regis got it settled on his chest it was already falling asleep. 

The sunny room was even warmer today, so Regis had completely removed his tunic this time and wore only his leggings. This meant that the thin, soft-looking skin of his belly was on full display. 

Geralt wondered what it would feel like against his battered knuckles. He thought he might almost be able to fit his circled hands all the way around that small waist, just as he could with Yennefer. 

To avoid staring, Geralt turned to leave. He was stopped by Regis's voice. 

“Geralt,” Regis called, eyes thankfully fixed on the pup so he didn’t see the way Geralt was looking at him. “Every week I’ve meant to bring our kitchen knives into town to have them sharpened, but we always need them and I always forget. We have a set of whetstones somewhere, they were a gift from someone in town, and so Dettlaff thought that perhaps you might be willing to sharpen the knives for us?”

Shocked by this request, Geralt looked to Dettlaff. Did Dettlaff really mean to intentionally give Geralt all the knives in the house? 

For several seconds Defflaff was focused on his work. Then he seemed to notice the silence and the attention and turned to meet Geralt’s eyes. 

Dettlaff lifted his eyebrows in response to Geralt’s questioning look. “They’re very dull,” Dettlaff said slowly, clearly confused why Geralt seemed to want his input. “I thought you might want something to do, and you doubtless know more about blades than any of us.”

A brief, reflexive feeling of anger at being seen as so little of a threat again came and went in Geralt’s mind. But this time it settled into a kind of startled relief that they _weren’t_ scared of him. To them, he wasn’t a frightening witcher capable of violence--he was the awkward newcomer who woke up with nightmares. This was soon followed by the discomfiting realization that of _course_ no one in a household of vampires would have any idea what to do with a dull blade. Vampires had no need of weapons and would never have been trained in how to care for them. Or, apparently, even the kinds of blades used in domestic life.

Geralt’s attention was drawn by the sound of the pup’s little sleeping breaths. The fuzz of its torso rose and fell in the quick pace of small creatures. One tiny foot hung down toward Regis’s navel, while one minuscule hand clung to Regis’s clawed thumb. 

The sight captivated Geralt. He wanted to just stand there and drink it in, the feeling at once sharp and soothing inside him like liquor on a cold night.

“Yeah, all right,” he agreed. Then he left the room right away, desperate to leave so he could corral his thoughts. 

Calliope happily helped him locate the whetstones. For a while Geralt considered doing the work in his own room, but while he liked the satisfaction of a properly sharp blade, the process itself was a dull one. This prospect was made even less appealing when he knew that if he just went upstairs to the studio and did it there, he too could listen to Regis read aloud.

Geralt agonized over it for several minutes before finally taking the stones and the knives upstairs. Dettlaff quickly got him settled at a little table along one wall and Geralt set to work. 

Soon the familiarity of blade and stone combined with the radiant warmth of the afternoon sun and the rise and fall of Regis’s voice to lull Geralt into a state of calm he hadn’t felt in years. His muscles softened as though he were in a hot bath.

Eventually he sweated to the point that his tunic stuck to his sides, back, and arms. Wanting to be rid of the clinging fabric, he unthinkingly shucked off the shirt and went back to the rocking of the blade over the stone. 

Behind him, Regis trailed off and the scratch of Dettlaff’s pencil stopped. When Geralt turned to see what was wrong, he found the eyes of both vampires fixed upon him. 

There was absolutely no way to interpret their expressions as anything other than lust. Dettlaff’s mouth was open and his pale eyes were visibly dilated as he stared half-seeing at Geralt’s face, as though Dettlaff himself were being hypnotised. Regis’s nostrils flared and his lashes fluttered. He bit his lip, chest heaving as he drew in a shaking inhalation. 

Geralt’s cheeks, already pink from the temperature, itched as he blushed even darker. 

“Maybe I should put my shirt back on,” he said quietly. 

At his words, Dettlaff turned sharply away toward his canvas. Regis tipped his head back, blinking rapidly and fixing his eyes on the ceiling. 

“My apologies,” Regis said in a tight voice. “I didn’t mean to...” He seemed to struggle with his words. “I didn’t anticipate the way you’d smell. And re-dressing wouldn’t help much at this point. The room is already full of you smelling like...that.” He gestured an open hand up and down in Geralt’s direction.

The impulse to cover himself and run grew upon hearing those words--what if _now_ was when they decided that he should be expected to provide something he didn’t want to give? 

But then Geralt realized what was actually being communicated. 

He’d bathed last night, and since then all he’d done was lazily sleep in, masturbate twice, eat more delicious peaches for breakfast, write another letter, cuddle the pup, and sit here in the studio with them. He’d been calm and happy the whole time, and it was only the sun that was making him sweat. Which meant that in terms of the way he currently smelled...

Regis and Dettlaff had both been disgusted by Geralt’s smell when he’d been so miserable during the first week. That they seemed so moved by his current scent implied something Geralt could hardly let himself think about. 

But before Geralt was forced to figure out what to say, Regis started reading again. His voice was steady and his eyes stayed fixed on the page. Dettlaff added a few last details with his pencil before he took out little jars of pigment and oil and mixed them. 

Well. If they were willing to let Geralt be, then he was willing to be here with them. 

**

That night, as Geralt lay gasping through the first climax of the evening, he realized with some distress how easy it had been to sink into thoughts of Regis and Dettlaff as he stroked himself. He didn’t know what a Deathless might be like in bed, but his mind seemed to have taken that uncertainty as a challenge. Their taste, the smell of their fluids, the feel of their unfamiliar parts in his hand or mouth...what would they be like?

Before he knew it he was stroking himself again.

Well. If he ever saw Yen again and she went digging in his mind and saw this, he refused to be held responsible. It wasn’t his fault that nobody else Geralt had ever met had responded so much to the smell of a happy witcher. Not even other witchers, truly; he and Eskel often fucked to distract themselves from their miserable circumstances. Even when they were safe at Kaer Morhen, it was always bitterly cold and full of so many painful memories that they were never truly at ease. 

As Geralt cupped his balls and played with his foreskin, he couldn’t help but picture how the two vampires would respond to him if he hadn’t been in the war. The way he’d smell if he feared nothing and no one and was living in a beautiful place like this where he was well-rested and well-fed. How they’d salivate and stare, their eyes growing at once distant and intense as they caught wind of him. 

He came to the image of them breathing open-mouthed over his body.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains the sex scene! If that's not your cuppa, skip from after they start kissing all the way to the end of the chapter.

On the fourth Thursday Geralt spent in the estate, he went again with Regis into town. Some folk still stared at Geralt, but he had ceased to be such a spectacle that people stopped what they were doing just to look at him. 

When the cart finally arrived at the bookstore, the shopkeeper dragged a whole series of wrapped parcels out from the back room and gave them to Regis to put in the cart. Then she gave a little “Oh!” and took something out from under the counter to hand to Geralt.

“Good news, Mister Geralt, you’ve finally got something in return!”

Only years of practice at maintaining a blank face kept Geralt’s eyes from going wide and hungry. He also managed not to tear the letter out of the woman’s hand. Instead, he noted the handwriting on the outside, took it with polite moderation, thanked her, and tucked it into his pocket. 

Once they’d settled the packages into the cart, Regis pointed the horse toward home and gave Geralt a curious look. 

“Are you not going to read your letter?”

“In private,” Geralt responded curtly. He feared Regis would press the issue, but Regis merely nodded to himself, and then went on to describe various small repairs around the house that Geralt might be able to help them do. He nodded along, barely following. 

Geralt tried not to think about the letter in his pocket (when he’d taken it from the shopkeep’s hand it had been thick, as though containing multiple pages, and the handwriting on the outside of it had been Eskel’s, which implied that as of some weeks ago, at least, Eskel had been alive) but his thoughts wandered over and over to the same thing: what if Eskel had written it weeks ago but had perished in the meantime? What if it contained news of Lambert’s death, or Yennefer’s, or even Ciri's?

But he waited, allowing Regis to prattle on as usual. When they at last reached the estate, several of the household came out to help unload the cart’s contents. Last week Geralt had taken care of the horse as his way of assisting, but today he slipped away, just barely managing not to sprint to his room. 

Once he was there he shut the door behind him. He sat down at his desk. He took several deep, steadying breaths. Then at long last he drew out the letter. 

He traced the characters on the outside: _To Geralt of Rivia, at the Estate of Dettlaff van der Eretein, near the town of Tagerach in Nazair._ When he turned it over, he saw to his shock that it was sealed with Yennefer’s seal: a pentagram accented with swirling lines. 

His hands shook as he broke the wax. 

Inside was not one but four letters, each written by someone different: Eskel, Yennefer, Lambert, and Jaskier. Even without reading them, the fact that they had been packaged as one suggested that the writers had been not only alive but all still together, at least for a while. 

The letter from Eskel had been the one positioned on top so Geralt picked it up to read first. His hands shook as he held it. 

> _Geralt,_
> 
> _I’ve sat staring at this paper for more than half an hour now but I still can’t think of what to say. Everything has changed so much so fast that I don’t know where to start. Maybe some of this you already know, but I imagine that if I were in your place I would want to hear it from someone I trusted before I believed it._
> 
> _On the date of your wedding (for lack of a better word) hostilities ceased overnight. It’s been two weeks now since then and there have been no attacks anywhere. Not Novigrad, not Beauclair, not Vizima, not anywhere. All reports have been clear. The Lodge waited a week before portaling down here to discuss next steps with Yennefer._
> 
> _Last night we met with a group of so-called diplomats: 1 Deathless, 1 katakan, 2 bruxa. They brought back Jens and Slava and Ciaran and Aiden. The 4 of them were all kept for their blood. Jens and Slava are both skittish around anyone but each other now, won’t meet your eyes and flinch if you get too close, and you know how Jens was even before they got him. But they’re alive, so that makes 5 of us Wolves left, not 3. The leeches must have beaten Ciaran half to death, let him heal, and then started bleeding him, because he’s covered in terrible scars and he won’t ever hold a bow or walk without crutches again. But he’s alive, and he’s likely to stay that way despite the damage. Aiden is missing an eye and a good deal of the face around it. Despite this I’ve never seen Lambert so happy._
> 
> _Yet I look at the 4 of them and all I can picture is what must be happening to you right now. The diplomats said that you would be safe and untouched but I don’t believe that. I won’t believe it till I see you with my own eyes. I tried to demand to see you right away, but they say that as the senior active witcher of our school, it’s my duty to escort them to to turn over the heads in our possession. The leeches refuse to travel by portal, too, so that means we’ve got to go the slow way from Beauclair to the mountains._
> 
> _Yennefer has agreed to come with us so that once this is over we can go to you together as soon as possible. She is forever criticizing my hair, my armor, Scorpion’s saddle, and every other thing. I think she’s fussing over me because she can’t fuss over you. But I’ll cope if it gets me to you any sooner. The bard has also tagged along._
> 
> _Every damn day till then I’m going to be waiting to see your face again. You better be undamaged when I get there._
> 
> _\- Eskel_

Geralt sat staring at the page. It wasn’t just his hands that were shaking now. Tremors ran up and down the muscles of his ribcage and belly and he could barely breathe. He could feel the paper on his fingertips, see it crinkling at the edges from the force of his grip, but it couldn’t be real, could it? What if Eskel had been thralled and forced to write this? It was his handwriting, but did that even _mean_ anything?

Numb and nauseated, Geralt read the second letter. 

> _My dearest,_
> 
> _As I told you when you departed, I should have expected that you would find some new way to destroy yourself in all this tremendous mess. For a witcher who is not meant to meddle with politics, you have managed to get yourself embroiled in a shocking amount of them._
> 
> _I am surprised to note that for once, however, your actions seem to have worked out exactly as you intended. I anticipate that this will make you absolutely insufferable in the future._
> 
> _Eskel and I have tedious diplomatic duties to discharge before we are at leisure to make our way to you. We will be accompanied to Kaer Morhen by four of the least charming individuals it has ever been my displeasure to meet, all of them of the vampiric persuasion. I find myself wondering exactly how much I could set on fire with the life force of a Deathless as a source to draw from, but political sensibility forbids me from the venture at this point. If an appropriate moment arrives, however, you may be assured that I shan’t hesitate._
> 
> _I shall open a portal to the town closest to you once I am at liberty to do so, and I will be accompanied by Eskel at the very least. Please endeavor to keep yourself presentable for my arrival._
> 
> _\- Your friend Yennefer_
> 
> _P.S. Kelpie is well, and soon she will be grazing on the grasses of the North before she turns her nose for the southern seas in search of greener pastures. I hope you have appropriate horse fodder._

The fine parchment of this one carried Yen’s perfume. Geralt had seen her write letters, and knew that she pressed the tip of one finger over the top of her perfume bottle, upended it, and then pressed the moistened pad of her finger to the bottom of her letters, right beside her signature. Sure enough, there was a faint oily discoloration of the parchment of this one, where the scent was strongest. 

They hadn’t parted as lovers. Yen had stated that she wouldn’t be the mistress to a married man, but Geralt had understood that what she really meant was that even though this was meant to be a political move and not a real marriage, it was still the single most important diplomatic connection made since the Conjunction. She would not interfere with that, nor even present the appearance of interfering with it. Her signature of ‘Your friend’ reiterated that she still felt that way. She’d known that Geralt couldn’t back out, and _wouldn’t_ even if doing so meant saving his relationship with her. 

But the rest of Yen’s letter was affectionate, so perhaps there was still hope. Maybe a portal would open by the front gate and Yennefer would gesture him through. Maybe she would take him far away somewhere and things between them would at last be easy.

Geralt closed his eyes. He knew that dreaming of going away somewhere with Yennefer and being with her again was a stupid thought, the kind of pointless hypothetical that his brain fixed upon because it couldn’t process everything else--including the letter’s post-script. 

Mentioning Ciri’s horse, Kelpie, was as direct as Yen could possibly be in discussing Ciri in print. But from those few lines, she’d said enough: Ciri was alive, she was safe, and in some secret fashion she would be going with Yen and Eskel and Jaskier and the vampires to Kaer Morhen before she came here. 

For several minutes Geralt had to just breathe. Even that took all his focus.

Then he picked up the third letter. Lambert’s jagged, loopy writing was immediately recognizable. The lines slanted and it was so sloppily written that it was obvious that Lambert had dashed it off at some speed. 

> _You complete blessed fuckup,_
> 
> _I don’t know how many vampire cocks you sucked to do this and I don’t want to know. But for fuck’s sake, please don’t stop._
> 
> _The leeches had Aiden. They had him for the last nine fucking months. I’ve already memorized every new mark on his body and I’m ready to kill five leeches for every one of those marks, but I don’t fucking dare. It’s been a damn fortnight and nobody’s died, nobody’s been thralled, nothing. Right when I’m extra ready to make mayhem and bomb everything that looks at me wrong, I’m not allowed to anymore because it might break the fucking peace._
> 
> _Aiden and I are gonna go over the Blue Mountains. Aiden heard a rumor once that they’ll let anybody marry anybody out there. I’m sorry you’re the poor bastard who had to marry leeches to get us to this point, but we’ll see if I can’t top your marital achievement and become the second witcher to ever get shackled to a ball and chain._
> 
> _I wish I could see you before I go but I’m not going to wait for some new awful thing to go wrong. You’re the best thing to ever happen to the School of the Wolf, you self-sacrificing prick. Thanks for everything._
> 
> _\- Lambert_

Geralt’s chest hurt. He’d been stabbed more than once and this was almost worse. He wanted to cry but the tears wouldn’t come, an inability that had persisted since the second round of Trials. But now his eyes burned, his sternum ached, and his mouth shook no matter how hard he pressed his lips together. Hunched over the desk and staring down at the letters, he clutched at his forehead, reading and rereading the words. 

When Aiden had vanished, it had been the final straw for Lambert. People who vanished in that way often turned up later as grotesquely mangled corpses placed in ostentatious locations. It was a calculated form of psychological warfare that worked precisely because it created responses like Lambert’s. He had hated life as a witcher even before the war, and in every subsequent confrontation after Aiden had disappeared, it had been clear that Lambert had been trying to die. He hadn’t wanted to be alive to see the body. Not after seeing Vesemir’s. 

Which meant that Geralt and Eskel had spent nine months desperately trying to get between Lambert and the enemy, taking more damage to prevent Lambert from being able to. Lambert had hated them for it, shouted at them over and over again to the point that Geralt had feared that even if they managed to keep Lambert alive there would be no love left between them. 

But now...now it had all been worth it. Aiden being alive meant Lambert would stay alive. And the final lines in the letter...

Geralt could barely let himself think about it because it made him so happy. 

One letter left. Jaskier’s letter was also perfumed, with the signature scent he’d worn since his dalliance with the Duchess of Toussaint, a cologne called _Nuits de Beauclair_. Geralt had always hated that scent because it gave him a headache, but now it got a fond smile out of him. 

> _Dearest Geralt, most accomplished of witchers,_
> 
> _Yet again, your unparalleled heroism saves the day. I have already begun work on my next great ballad (as yet untitled) based upon this latest of your escapades. I will, of course, need more information about your current state of affairs in order to complete it, and to that end I will hie myself to you with all haste once I have finished going with Eskel and Yennefer to dispense with their diplomatic duties in releasing the captives._
> 
> _We recently met with a small contingent of vampire diplomats, and while I asked them all I could about your new beaux, I was not assisted in the manner to which I am accustomed from those in such socially crucial positions. The descriptions they gave me contained distressingly little of the relevant information about what a vampire wedding is like, or indeed even what your new spouses are like. The little I could get out of them characterized Dettlaff van der Eretein as an “awkward recluse,” a phrase such as I might use to describe my poor uncle Salezac de Batrey, who shut himself up with thirty of his favorite cats after his wife died and never emerged again. When he finally perished, his entire estate, which had once been locally known for its beauty, sold for less than a thousand crowns because of its state of extreme disrepair. As you may imagine, after hearing this, I am left feeling some concern that you may not be experiencing matrimonial bliss filled with concupiscence, as you deserve, and may instead be in a position of some awkwardness. If that is the case and you are in need of social rescue by someone more able to carry on decent conversation, worry not, I shall arrive soon._
> 
> _The diplomats described your other husband (and of course you would manage to not only become the first man with one husband but two, you truly exceptional fellow), one Emiel Regis Rohellec Terzieff-Godefroy (a fine name, and one whose family history I shall be eager to learn) as “a sentimental fool with more feelings than sense.” This is a very unflattering way of talking about one’s own kinfolk, but given that my own mother would have described me in precisely the same way, I am attempting to take this as an encouraging sign._
> 
> _I know that you have a disposition unfortunately prone to melancholy, but please endeavor to listen when I say that this time, my dear, you and the vampires who proposed this solution have really achieved something magnificent. I have been hounding their representatives night and day in an effort to be allowed to meet the ones responsible, but they rebuff my efforts. I think that our toothy opponents are in fact rather embarrassed that this is the end to the war. Well, I for one see nothing mortifying in peace and harmony! I shall endeavor to convince them of the same._
> 
> _I beg you to write back with all haste and all details. May you be blessed with verbosity and a great desire to hold a pen._
> 
> _Love,_
> 
> _Jaskier_

It was just like Jaskier to hide his true feelings behind bluster and idealistic romantic nonsense. He was worried, that much was clear. He had been distraught by his inability to help during the entire war. With human disputes, Jaskier had been able to use his skill with words in various ways, either by talking his way out of conflicts or spying for various nations. But with vampires that had never been an option. He had been forced to watch as more and more of his friends perished, helpless along the sidelines and always aware of the possibility that he would be killed or tortured and his fate used as a weapon against them. 

Standing up from his chair, Geralt paced around his room. He shook out his arms and legs, bouncing on his toes, desperate to discharge some of the frantic energy that was now flowing through him. He wanted to run, he wanted to fight, he wanted to--

\--to _fuck,_ the thought occurred to him. He wanted to fuck. His thoughts went to Eskel and Yennefer first, of course, but they weren’t here. And then his thoughts went to Jaskier’s letter and its mention of _matrimonial bliss filled with concupiscence._

It had now been weeks of touching himself and thinking of Regis and Dettlaff and always stopping short of allowing thought to become action because _what if it had meant nothing that he’d come here and bound himself to them._ What if he had left the others to die? What if it was revealed that he’d betrayed their memories with the enemy? But now...now...

They were his so-called ‘husbands,’ but so far they hadn’t even consummated the marriage. Geralt still wasn’t sure if it would somehow nullify the peace treaty for him to sleep with other people someday, but if Yennefer was afraid of that, Geralt knew he ought to be as well. Which meant that if he _refused_ to fuck his husbands, then this would be a long, celibate retirement. 

His libido had been making itself a damned nuisance as always. Soon, he knew that he would completely cease to be satisfied by his own hand. He’d made a lot of stupid choices in the past when he reached that point, but it couldn’t be wrong anymore to use up some of his energy with Regis or Dettlaff, could it? They wanted him. And he...

He wanted them. 

When he at last let himself think that, the thought was accompanied by a sinking feeling. It was obviously just the uneven bond that made them desire him, not any real sort of attraction. It forced them to want to make him happy, didn’t it? Even humans rarely found him desirable. To a higher vampire, he had nothing worthwhile to offer. They were already happily mated to each other, and Geralt didn’t want to be like Jaskier, who was forever sleeping with other people’s husbands and wives and then being surprised when it turned out badly.

But...but Dettlaff and Regis could protect themselves from him if they needed to, surely? Geralt was no threat to them, he’d seen that over and over again in the last month. And they had successfully resisted touching him in all this time. If he offered and their interest in him was nothing more than a compulsion they didn’t truly wish to act upon, they would just refuse. Wouldn’t they? And if it was a compulsion they wanted relief from, then Geralt could provide it to them and they could be free of the stress. 

Now he thought about it, though, Geralt wondered if Regis might not attempt to hedge around a rejection with politeness. Geralt hated that sort of soft resistance, hated the feeling that he was too frightening to just refuse. His witcher traits wouldn’t be unnerving to one of the Deathless, of course--a _tiur-ziva,_ rather--but even so. 

Dettlaff, though. Dettlaff would not sugarcoat it. That made him the better candidate.

Well then, Geralt thought--there was no way for him to know what the response would be without asking. So he would ask! If they refused him, then Geralt had been refused before many times. He was used to that. He would cope. 

Thus decided, Geralt went out of his room and climbed the stairs. At this time of day Dettlaff would be in his studio. As Geralt strode down the halls, he found the door already open, probably in anticipation of Regis’s return home. 

At the sound of footsteps Dettlaff turned, lowering his brush. The early afternoon sun fell on his bare chest and belly and the sight was so beautiful that it stopped Geralt in his tracks. Light outlined the fine shape of Dettlaff’s shoulders and collarbones, turning the deep blackness of his hair almost blue and illuminating his pale eyes into a fiery brightness. 

More hesitant in the face of someone who looked like that, Geralt dropped his gaze as he moved closer, careful not to knock the small table that contained a second palette and the jar of turpentine. When he bent down to kiss Dettlaff, however, he was stopped by a hand on his chest and a perplexed look. 

“What are you doing?” Dettlaff asked. 

“Kissing you?” Geralt replied. He straightened, now uncertain. 

Dettlaff’s nostrils flared. “But you smell--” he drew a deep breath. “A mix of things, but not happy.”

Geralt blinked. He should have expected this. Reading the letters hadn’t been easy even despite the fact that they contained everything he had wanted to hear and more. He himself had felt the same reluctance about some of the humans who had tried to fuck him over the years, when their words had said one thing but their bodies had smelled of fear.

“I just received letters from my friends,” Geralt explained, hoping that this would imply everything it needed to. From the expression of confusion in Dettlaff’s face, it seemed not. “It was good news. They wrote that they are safe, and that some of our allies have been returned from imprisonment.”

“And that makes you want sex?” Dettlaff asked, apparently no more enlightened than before.

Now wrong-footed and unsure how to explain everything those letters had made him feel, Geralt instead asked, “Have I given you cause to believe that I would do this if I did not want it?”

Dettlaff seemed to consider this for a moment. Then he shook his head. He looked at Geralt’s mouth and tilted his face up, waiting. 

Drawing in one last deep breath to steel himself, Geralt closed the space between them. 

He couldn’t help picturing Dettlaff transforming and sinking his teeth into Geralt’s lips and tearing them from his face. Geralt had seen corpses like that who had been picked over by ghouls, the rest of the face intact but their lips gone and teeth and gums on display. Would he look like that?

But nothing happened. Dettlaff’s mouth was soft and slightly cool, just as Geralt had expected. That was all. Dettlaff’s tongue was soft too when it swept over Geralt’s bottom lip. Withdrawing just a little, Geralt breathed, and then he returned. 

By the third kiss, Dettlaff rose and set his palette and brush down on his seat. Dettlaff was taller, his lanky build putting him almost a hand’s-breadth above Geralt, so the difference forced their mouths apart as Dettlaff straightened. But he wound one hand around Geralt’s lower back, pulling their bodies close, and rested the other at Geralt’s hip. 

Geralt expected Dettlaff to close the space between their mouths again, but instead Dettlaff laid kisses on other parts of Geralt’s face--on his cheekbone and up to his eyes, which fluttered closed, and then on the lids themselves, first one side and then the other. 

For a moment, because of Dettlaff’s greater height and what he was doing, it felt just like kissing Eskel. 

Sometimes he and Eskel had stolen moments like this, so sweet that Geralt had always wondered if they were breaking some unspoken witcher rule. Sometimes Geralt had kissed Yen like this too, during moments when she was half asleep and wouldn’t protest it. But during the war it had stopped happening with either of them. Geralt hadn’t even noticed the absence of that tenderness till now, when it was being so shockingly given by someone unexpected. 

Humans kissed as they were wedded, Geralt thought dizzily as Dettlaff let out a pleased hum and used the palm of one hand to cup Geralt’s chin. Dettlaff turned him just so before taking the shell of Geralt’s ear delicately into his mouth. The silken wetness of that raised the fine hairs at Geralt’s nape, fizzing down his spine to pool in his belly. Maybe this was almost like being human, and married, and given the kinds of soft kisses a loving husband might give his wife?

When Dettlaff turned downward and fixed his mouth on Geralt’s neck, Geralt blinked up at the ceiling and expected the fangs to now make an appearance. How could they not, when Geralt had given such an invitation--

\--But nothing happened. Dettlaff nuzzled into the pulse point, drew his open mouth over Geralt’s jugular vein, and made another pleased noise deep in his chest before rolling his hips against Geralt’s.

All at once Geralt’s desire fully awoke. It was so easy to imagine that mouth wrapped around his fingers, his bollocks, his cock. The idea filled him with a combination of lust and the kind of foolish daring that drove young witchers to goad each other into seeing who could go nearest to a forktail nest without waking its occupants. Both feelings thrilled him. 

“Take me to bed,” Geralt murmured. 

The request received immediate obedience: Dettlaff bent, hooking one arm under Geralt’s legs and another around his back and lifting him with apparent ease. It was a sudden reminder that this wasn’t just a handsome man, this was a _vampire._ Only a vampire’s unnatural strength could make light of someone of Geralt’s dense build. 

But in this moment, at least, despite the thrill of unease it gave him, it stoked Geralt’s desire, too. He felt a little silly being carried this way when he was perfectly capable of walking, but there were always some moments during an amorous encounter when something a little ridiculous or awkward occurred. 

Shouldering open a door much further down the corridor, Dettlaff thus gave Geralt his first sight of the master bedroom. It was spacious, the windows open to admit a lazy breeze and the smell of the orchard. The curtains were drawn back from the sides of the bed and the sheets and blankets in it were rumpled. As Dettlaff set Geralt down among the folds, the dense musk of vampire bodies rose to surround Geralt. 

Panic rose with it, uncontrollable. When Dettlaff laid a hand on his belly Geralt flinched, face jerking the side and gut shrinking away from the contact. 

The hand withdrew. 

“You are afraid of me,” Dettlaff said unhappily. When Geralt forced himself to lift his chin and look, the vampire wore an expression of concern. 

Rubbing a hand over his face, Geralt drew in a deep breath to calm himself. But this only brought him another lungful of the concentrated vampire scent. It was too easy to remember that the first time he’d smelled it this strongly had been in the dungeons of Tesham Mutna, mixed into the charnel miasma of human blood and death. 

“I don’t think there is any way for me to be with one of your kind without being a least a little afraid,” Geralt admitted, wondering if this would halt things before they’d even really begun. “But I’m still interested. Might be easier in my room?”

When this got a nod and an offer of Dettlaff’s hand to help him stand, Geralt wondered why Dettlaff was being so accommodating. Was sex something he viewed as some sort of diplomatic necessity if Geralt was the one requesting it? Surely not, or it would have been mentioned before now. 

Questions swirled around Geralt’s head as he led the way to his own room. They arrived quickly and he shut the door behind them, stripping off his shirt and bending to unlace his boots in quick sharp jerks. He sat on the edge of the bed to do it. 

When he was barefoot and sprawled on his bed to start on the laces of his trousers, though, Dettlaff moved closer and stopped him, their fingers bumping as Dettlaff’s long, graceful hands took over.

As he let Dettlaff do it, Geralt thought about how there were a hundred little ways to potentially distinguish a vampire from a human even in their most human forms, little tells that referenced their true shape. Any one or two alone was well within human variance, but enough together in one individual and they told a tale. Elongated fingers with pronounced knuckles and long nails were among the most obvious signs. Both Regis and Dettlaff were clear examples of this. 

Dettlaff was careful of his nails as he slid them under the top of Geralt’s trousers and eased them down. Geralt lifted his hips to help. A moment later he was naked but for a single sock hanging off his foot, and a shake of his leg rid him of that too. 

Dettlaff’s eyes widened as he regarded Geralt’s naked body. Geralt’s cock was beginning to awaken, blushing as it thickened against his belly. Dettlaff pulled his fingerless gloves off, letting them fall onto the floor beside Geralt’s clothes. 

“I’ve never seen a human naked before,” Dettlaff admitted. “Never seen so many scars this close, either.” He laid himself out on the bed beside Geralt. Dettlaff’s own bare torso, with its perfect unblemished skin and absence of nipples, provided a stark contrast. Deathless couldn’t scar, so Geralt could barely imagine how foreign and strange his body must look to one.

“Some of them are numb,” Geralt said, self-conscious. “Some of them are hypersensitive.” 

Dettlaff ran one curious fingertip over a nipple, something he’d probably also never seen up close before. When it began to harden, Dettlaff made a noise of shock. He stared at it as it went from flat and smooth to pebbled and pronounced, and then, apparently curious, he bent down to lick it. When Geralt couldn’t help but let out a noise at the sensation of that, Dettlaff sealed his mouth around it and sucked. 

What followed was a curious experience for Geralt, as much erotic as it was perplexing. Dettlaff acted little like most of Geralt’s human lovers, who tended to fixate upon the obvious erogenous zones. After a thorough exploration of Geralt’s nipple, Dettlaff lifted Geralt’s arm and pushed his nose into the hair there in a way that was remarkably similar to the way Geralt’s witcher lovers behaved about body smells. After rubbing his nose through the white wisps under Geralt’s arm, Dettlaff dragged his open mouth around and around Geralt’s navel, seemingly fascinated with the feeling of it upon his lips. The divot at Geralt’s solar plexus held his attention too and he pressed his tongue there, making circles before flattening the socket of his eye against the big puckered scar on the right side of Geralt’s chest. The exquisitely thin skin of Dettlaff’s eyelids and the fluttering hairs of his lashes pressed into a patch of scar tissue that was hypersensitive, sending a rush of electric sensations up Geralt’s body to his jaw. He shivered, and against all sense, his cock hardened further. 

Glancing up at him, Dettlaff raised his brows in silent question: _Are you all right?_ In answer, Geralt lifted his arms a little higher and laid them flat on the bed, offering himself for this to continue. 

Geralt had had lovers respond with desire to his strength, or the broadness of his shoulders, or just simply to his cock and what they anticipated he would do with it. He wasn’t sure he’d ever slept with someone who seemed to find his body this fascinating in a way that _didn’t_ appear to be obviously erotic--but Dettlaff was enjoying himself, judging by his contented little hums. That alone was enough to bring Geralt the rest of the way to fully hard.

The sporadic, bizarre touches were, in their way, more arousing than the targeted and thus predictable approach of a lover familiar with human bodies. As Dettlaff sucked at Geralt’s other nipple and then withdrew to drag the dips and ridges of one of Geralt’s scars across his lips, it reminded Geralt of something. He squirmed, cock twitching, for several long moments before he realized what his mind had been trying to recall. 

This was just like Jaskier when he was working on a composition and he fiddled with the back-end of his pencil, nibbling on it and running it along the underside of his jaw. Just like Eskel when he thought no one was looking and he stuck the hilt of his dagger into his mouth. Just like Geralt himself when he had a spare bit of stiff leather and he fit it between his teeth and the inside of his jaw just because it felt interesting to have something there. Dettlaff was using Geralt’s body to do the hundred little things a person did just because they felt good in some obscure, indescribable way.

Jaskier had always stopped when he’d realized Geralt was watching, ashamed in a way that spoke of deportment teachers and rapped knuckles. Geralt and Eskel had been smacked for doing such things too, told that there were too many dangerous and toxic things in the keep for them to be acting like babies by putting every damn thing into their mouths. 

But there was something erotic about knowing that Dettlaff wasn’t just doing what he was doing to please Geralt--he was pleasing himself _on_ Geralt. Even though most of Dettlaff’s touches weren't even sexual really, the idea that Geralt’s body felt satisfying to touch pleased Geralt with almost the same intensity as when Yen took her pleasure by riding him. 

By the time Dettlaff took Geralt’s fingers into his mouth, Geralt watched in fascination, unsurprised as Dettlaff didn’t just suck them as one might expect, but wedged the tip of one of his teeth under the side of Geralt’s fingernail, then used the same nail to press into a small divot at the tip of his tongue, then pushed Geralt’s finger between his cheek and gums in exactly the same way Geralt himself liked. The wet softness of it of course made Geralt think of putting his cock there too and that was pleasant, but more than that, it had simply never occurred to him that anything intimate could be like this. 

By the time Dettlaff had made his way down Geralt’s legs before circling back up to his cock, Geralt had leaked clear fluid onto his belly. Dettlaff’s immediate response, just as Geralt’s would have been, was to first lean close and smell it, and then lick it up, drop by drop, until his mouth at last sealed over the tip of Geralt’s prick as the source.

With a thrill of both terror and arousal, it occurred to Geralt that Dettlaff might actually try to fit one of his elongated teeth into the opening of Geralt’s cock. 

But Dettlaff didn’t. Instead, he withdrew to lick between the middle two fingers on each of his hands, down at the web of skin and bone, before lacing his hands together and fitting Geralt’s cock into the slick gap between four of his fingers. Bizarrely, doing this made Dettlaff shudder, letting out a husky groan through his nose. Were vampires sensitive there? Apparently so. 

Relaxing his jaw, Dettlaff then angled the head of Geralt’s prick to rub upward against the pebbled flesh of Dettlaff’s hard palate--and he groaned again. It was nothing like what people normally did with their mouths on his prick, and so completely about what made _Dettlaff_ feel good that Geralt couldn’t help but respond in kind. His prick twitched into the touch and a rolling surge of pleasure spread through him. 

By the time Dettlaff let go of Geralt’s cock again some minutes later he was panting and speckles were coming up along his hairline and the backs of his wrists. Geralt knew what that meant--most of the Deathless _(tiur-ziva,_ his mind supplied, a sweeter word by far) were speckled in their middle form, the one that was clearly inhuman but wasn’t the bat-form they could only take on full moons. 

“I can’t--” Dettlaff swallowed, lips glistening, and his spots receded. “I don’t know if I will be able to maintain this form if I grow any more excited. Is it better to stop, or to close your eyes?”

Geralt’s arousal was so intense now that the idea of stopping held no appeal. But the idea of closing his eyes so that a vampire could transform and put its mouth on him felt like standing on the edge of a very high precipice and waiting to be pushed over the edge. 

Which, well--the first thing Yennefer had done when she’d met him was control his mind and nearly get him killed. Geralt was fairly sure Dettlaff wouldn’t enthrall him, and all these years later Yennefer was one of his greatest friends, allies, and lovers. So sometimes risky heights just meant getting to imagine what it was like to fly. 

Geralt closed his eyes. 

One of those long hands hooked behind his knee, spreading him open so Dettlaff could move into the space there. The briefest moment of damp air upon Geralt’s shaft warned him before Dettlaff’s tongue hooked under Geralt’s balls and lifted one of them into his mouth. 

Geralt froze as those sharp incisors pressed together through the loose skin close to his body, just tight enough to be unnerving without being painful. It was so easy to imagine Dettlaff jerking his head, tearing--and then Geralt felt the exact moment those teeth started to lengthen. Dettlaff withdrew before it went any further. 

Equal parts delighted and terrified, Geralt jerked helplessly in Dettlaff’s grip. But when Dettlaff let out an interrogative little noise to check in with him, Geralt just lifted his other knee. 

“Come on, then,” he invited.

Over the next few minutes Geralt didn’t even need to have his eyes open to know that Dettlaff was fighting with his form. He kept taking each of Geralt’s balls into his mouth and having to let it go again when his teeth lengthened and the points turned needle-sharp. Sweat broke out along Geralt’s chest and neck and his cock leaked. They were both excited by one another’s differences, he thought: Geralt by Dettlaff’s teeth, Dettlaff by the unfamiliar organs.

The sticky evidence of Geralt’s enthusiasm eventually got Dettlaff’s attention again and he leaned forward, lapping at the spill a second time before toying with Geralt’s tip. The closer Geralt grew to orgasm, the more he leaked, and the more of those rumbling noises of pleasure Dettlaff made, until the sweet anticipation of it was choking Geralt. His legs shook, he could barely breathe, he couldn’t think of anything in the world beyond that mouth and tongue and those hands. 

When Dettlaff wedged Geralt between his fingers again, whimpered at however that made him feel, and pressed the tip of his tongue inside Geralt’s foreskin, Geralt came. For a long, silent moment all he could feel was the flex and squirm of that tongue and then his hips jerked and he grabbed at Dettlaff’s wrists, holding him in place as Geralt shuddered. But it seemed Geralt need not have worried Dettlaff would stop before it was over--the noise Dettlaff let out as Geralt spilled against his lips was _ecstatic._

When it was over and Geralt lay twitching on the bed, Dettlaff laved every bit of the evidence from Geralt’s oversensitive cock and belly, then pushed his tongue into the opening again as though he could not get enough. 

This got a little laugh out of Geralt. Sure, he liked giving head too, but the result of it was just something one tolerated. It was hardly a delicacy! To a Deathless, however--a _tiur-ziva_ \--that seemed not to be the case. 

Normally Geralt only needed a moment to catch his breath and wait for the sensitivity to fade before he was eager to go again, one orgasm alone not enough to satisfy him. But now--now a sweet lassitude overtook him, weighing his limbs into the bed. He felt so good, and it was so easy to picture a future in which they did this again and again, enough for even a vampire’s body to become familiar and safe. His heart slowed and he let out a satisfied sigh. He thought he could almost feel Dettlaff's body between his thighs as if it were a part of his own. When he opened his eyes, he only felt curious, not afraid. 

To his disappointment Dettlaff had his forehead leaned against Geralt’s belly and was panting. Geralt couldn’t see the face, just the dark spots along the hairline, the pointed ears, the long claws resting on his thighs. 

In any other state but the very tranquil one in which he now found himself, the knock at the door would have startled Geralt. It was a gentle knock, tentative, as though the person on the other side wasn’t sure of their welcome. Geralt, so deep his lassitude that he felt nothing could drag him out of it, merely let out a hum that Dettlaff echoed. 

When the door opened to show Regis, it was somehow exactly who Geralt had expected, as if Geralt had felt him arrive there. 

Geralt had seen people go red with arousal before, but this was the first time he’d seen someone’s _eyes_ blush. That was the only way he could describe how Regis’s eyes widened and his whole sclera darkened to black when his gaze fell on the bed. 

“Oh my,” he said, his voice quavering a little. “I felt--but I didn’t believe--”

Dettlaff let out a confirming rumble. Of what, Geralt wasn’t sure, but it didn’t matter. A delicious feeling suffused his limbs, as though he were a jar of honey with light shining through it. 

By the time Regis had moved to the bedside, however, his eyes were human again. He searched Geralt’s face and Geralt couldn’t help but smile up at him, lazy and willing. 

“Come on then,” Geralt offered. 

Regis began to unbutton his tunic, so it seemed the offer had been accepted. 

To Geralt’s surprise, however, the person Regis kissed first was Dettlaff, drawing him upright and urging him with one thumb to open his mouth. Regis licked into him, pink tongue sweeping over Dettlaff’s lips and teeth and tongue. Geralt was so taken by examining what Dettlaff looked like--his nose flattened and spread when he changed form, apparently, eyes-shape dramatically altered and fangs protruding from his jaw--that for several long moments Geralt didn’t realize what Regis was doing. Then it occurred to him all at once: Regis was _tasting the semen in Dettlaff’s mouth._

This suspicion was proved correct when Regis purred, “It’s been so long since I tasted a human this way.” He lifted his head and looked Geralt in the eye. “Will you let me have you too?”

Geralt couldn’t nod fast enough.

At this permission Regis immediately bent to suckle at Geralt himself. Geralt gasped, thighs flexing, as Regis pulled the foreskin back and licked into every delicate little fold and ridge of Geralt’s cock. He clutched at the bedclothes, simultaneously overwhelmed and hoping it wouldn’t stop.

Regis tossed his gloves down too before the three of them together moved toward the middle of the bed. Getting his body to cooperate at all right now took monumental effort for Geralt when he felt so good. But he just barely managed it, rolling over and getting his knees under him. 

When he tried to move a little further, though, a pair of hands stroked over his hips and ass and stopped him in his tracks. 

“No, just stay right there,” Regis told him, and then the tickle of breath on Geralt’s tailbone told him what would happen next. 

He arched his back, biting his lip in anticipation as Regis spread him open with his thumbs and licked right over Geralt’s opening. At first it was little cat-laps, lick after lick after lick teasing at Geralt until his cock ached. As though sensing this, Regis curled an arm under Geralt and wrapped the head in his grip, using his other hand to push down on the middle of Geralt’s back until his chest pressed to the bed and he had to turn his face to be able to breathe. It opened him completely to Regis’s mercy. 

The fact that Regis wasn’t moving his hand and was only holding Geralt’s prick hardly mattered in the end. The dense ache of sensation there responded to any touch, and the minute shifts of pressure and the increasing slickness would soon be enough on their own. 

Withdrawing, Regis swept the end of his nose along the tender insides of Geralt’s buttocks, huffing all the way. Geralt couldn’t judge the impulse, as he himself had done the same thing with as many of his lovers as would let him. 

With another rumbling noise of delight, Regis dove back in, this time curling his tongue right into Geralt. Geralt couldn't tell if it was just the position or if Regis’s tongue had actually changed length, but it felt like it sank deep into him every time--push and withdraw, push and withdraw, the vampire’s breath tickling over Geralt’s tailbone as Regis let out a long, continuous groan. 

The bed shifted as Dettlaff moved. A hand slid up the inside of Geralt’s thigh and a thumb stroked down the underside of the shaft, and that was all it took before he was gone. The sweet bloom of pleasure spread until it was all he knew, and then he shuddered, spine bowing as he gasped for breath. 

At that he collapsed onto his side and Regis let him. When Geralt opened one bleary eye, he saw Regis licking himself clean, tongue pressing into every dip and curve of his bare hand as though Geralt were made of honey in truth and his spend was the sweetest thing to taste. High-pitched whimpers escaped Regis as he did it, brows drawn together in profound attention. 

When his hand was wholly clean, Regis turned back to Geralt. Regis’s face, still human, broke into a soft and tentative smile. 

“Another?” he asked. Geralt just nodded, unable to even speak. 

With a nod, Regis flexed his hand, staring hard at it as though focusing intensely--and then, slowly, his long nails shrank, withdrawing like Dettlaff’s fangs, leaving only blunt, short human fingernails. 

_Handy,_ Geralt thought to himself, and then bit his lip at his own stupid pun. He could tell where this was going. 

The next step was apparently Regis stretching himself out along one of Geralt’s hips, shoulder pressed under Geralt’s left thigh. Once settled Regis bent his head to suckle at Geralt, sealing his lips and pulling at Geralt with draws of his tongue. Every increase of pressure sent ripples of pleasure through Geralt, so sharp it was almost pain. 

Through the overwhelming intensity of that Geralt just managed to keep his eyes open to watch as Dettlaff took Regis’s fingers in his mouth and Regis whined. When Regis withdrew his wetted hand, he brought it between Geralt’s legs to press at his opening. 

One digit slid in with perfect ease, all the way to the base until Regis’s knuckles and other fingers pressed against Geralt’s tailbone and taint. A strange, warbling noise escaped Regis, and Geralt watched in astonishment as Regis dropped his mouthful and hid his face in Geralt’s hip, shoulders trembling. 

Geralt had seen men react with less intensity to burying their entire _cocks_ in him than this vampire was having to fingering him. There was something about the hands of a _tiur-ziva,_ clearly, though finding out what would have to wait for later. 

The way Regis used his fingers wasn’t like what most humans did with their hands in this context, either. There was barely any stroke to it, just small incremental pushes and twists of Regis’s wrist that seemed to have Regis fully coming apart at the seams. When he withdrew, spit into his hand, and pushed back in with two fingers, again all the way in so that the web of his fingers were pressed tight to Geralt’s opening, Regis gasped against Geralt’s prick. Another twist of his wrist and he swore under his breath in what sounded like Rasna. Then, seemingly out of desperation, he started sucking Geralt again. 

This time Geralt’s peak came even quicker, spurred on by the way Regis himself was responding. The feeling of Regis inside and around Geralt linked together into a perfect loop of sensation and he came soundlessly in one long, drawn-out wave. 

Some nameless amount of time later Geralt opened his eyes, blinking muzzily before he could make his brain resolve his sight into meaningful shapes. By the time he did, Regis was twitching and jerking against his hip, for all the world as though he’d come too. 

Dettlaff chuckled at them, gently prompting Regis to pull out and then urging him up the bed. A few tugs at Regis’s laces had his leggings sagging down, but Regis stopped Dettlaff with one hand, glancing at Geralt with a look of concern. 

At the sight of that worried expression, Geralt realized exactly what had Regis so concerned. Geralt didn’t like thinking about the dissections he had performed on detached Deathless bodies, not here with two husbands in his bed. But the fact that he had done those things meant he was aware that the genitals of a _tiur-ziva_ were little like human ones. 

Trying to put those gory explorations out of his mind, he beckoned at Regis, prompting him to go on. So Regis rolled onto his side, pushing down his clothes and tossing them over the side of the bed.

Naked, Regis looked even smaller than when he was dressed, a bony, diminutive little shape with prominent hips and elbows. He glanced at Geralt, checking his face for response, and Geralt made sure to keep his expression one of calm interest. 

Between Regis’s thighs was something that looked much like what Geralt had seen on the slabs of Kaer Morhen. Unlike humans, vampires were hairless between their legs, and the lack made the deep blush of Regis’s arousal even more obvious. At a glance, Regis looked somewhat like the women Geralt had slept with. But it was no more than a passing similarity, especially as Regis’s slit was currently leaking a thick, pinkish fluid. Geralt didn’t know what it was; some sort of lubricating secretion, maybe? 

Dettlaff sprawled at Geralt’s side, tapping at Regis’s hip to prompt him to move until Regis straddled Dettlaff’s belly. Straightaway Dettaff dipped one of his thumbs into Regis’s slit, playing with the fluid there and then pushing into the hole. 

“Come on,” Dettlaff prompted, arm moving as he rubbed inside Regis. Regis really blushed this time, in more ways than one: his cheeks pinked and faint grey spots rose along his hairline. His hands flexed on his thighs, letting out an embarrassed chuckle as he glanced at Geralt before looking away again. 

“Come on,” Dettlaff repeated. 

Regis sighed, biting his lip. Dettlaff withdrew his hand. And then, slowly, like nothing Geralt had ever seen, Regis’s cock emerged. 

Geralt stared, fascinated. The pointed tip of it parted the slit like a crocus emerging from the snow. The ruffled edge of the glans, as it passed into view, was nothing like human, nor were the rows of little tendrils that rose from the top and sides of the shaft like some sort of mane. Each of the tendrils was about the length of Geralt’s thumbnail and a deep, fleshy pink. Closer to the base, when that finally slipped out, the protrusions shrank into tiny nubs. 

Smiling, Dettlaff brushed one fingertip along the top of the erection. The shapes there slipped and yielded around the touch and Regis shivered, shaft twitching. Clearly the protrusions were made of very tender tissues indeed. 

Dettlaff laced his hands together just as he had with Geralt, leaving a very intentional gap between the middle two fingers of both hands. This gap he slid over the tip of Regis’s cock, creating a tight ring for the other vampire to fuck. Saying something in Rasna, he looked up at Regis’s face with a smile.

Given the way Regis responded, the words had probably been ‘come on’ again. Regis responded as if that were the case, rocking his hips to push himself through Dettlaff’s fingers. As he did it, both vampires let out a low, happy rumble. 

When Regis withdrew, every nub and protrusion squashed through the gap. It was hypnotic to watch, and Geralt could only imagine what it would feel like inside him. 

Very little time passed before Regis shuddered again, spots suddenly appearing all over his body. His cock flexed, jerking in a very familiar way--but there was no hole at the tip and no gush of fluids in the way Geralt would have expected from a human. Instead, more of that pinkish fluid pearled from the tips of all of the little protrusions, dripping all over Dettlaff’s stomach. 

Ejaculate, Geralt realized, eyes widening. That pink stuff was vampire ejaculate. But if that’s what it was, then that meant...that meant that Regis really _had_ come just from fingering Geralt. 

Dettlaff licked this, too, from his hands with a hum of pleasure. 

“Your hands,” Geralt started to say, unable to resist his curiosity any longer. “You’re clearly feeling things in your hands that I just don’t feel. Makes me pretty jealous.”

This startled a laugh out of Regis. His spots vanished, and when he looked at Geralt, his eyes were a normal color. 

“That’s what you’re going to ask about?” Regis smiled. “It’s vestigial patagium.”

For a moment Geralt thought the words were in Rasna before his slow mind pieced together the syllables into something he understood. Patagium was the thin wing-skin which draconids and other non-feathered species used to fly. So vestigial patagium...

“Even in our most human forms, our bodies remember that the skin between our fingers is meant to cover a vastly greater surface area,” Regis explained. “The base of our fingers around our knuckles, and especially the web of skin in between them, is exquisitely sensitive, as is the underside of our arms and down along our sides and hips. There is a reason most of us wear gloves no matter the weather, and few if any wear short sleeves.”

Geralt had noted that, but he’d believed it to be a cultural norm rather than a physiological necessity. 

“Huh. So if someone stuck their dick in your armpit...”

Dettlaff giggled. There was no other description for the sound he made. It was undignified and ridiculous and Geralt instantly loved him a little bit for it. 

“Another time,” Dettlaff grinned, showing off that his teeth were still elongated. “I’m still too sensitive now.”

“The hands really do it for you, huh.”

Dismounting from his mate, Regis gestured to Geralt’s other side, which was unoccupied. “May I?”

Surprised, Geralt nodded, holding out his arm to make space. Regis climbed over him, managing not to put elbows or knees anywhere uncomfortable, and then settled in along Geralt’s right side. Dettlaff seemed to take this as his cue to do the same on Geralt’s left, and in another few moments, Geralt was surrounded by smooth expanses of hairless skin. 

Images of the last hour swirled through his mind, along with phrases from the four letters he’d received. But his eyelids were heavy, weighted down by the golden pleasure of it all. Before he knew it, he was asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got the idea of ‘vestigial patagium’ and vampire erogenous zones from [this fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12224247/chapters/27768684) by a_sparrows_fall. It's a really wonderful choose-your-own-endgame-ship fic featuring Geralt/Regis and Geralt/Yen as options. I highly recommend it!
> 
> Jens and Slava are witcher OCs created by [Dira Sudis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsudis). 
> 
> ADDITIONAL NOTE: if you're wondering why this fic uses "Jaskier" instead of "Dandelion," it's because I actually like Jaskier as a character, while Dandelion's philandering in the books/games puts me off him. So while this is very much a game-fandom fic, I'm pulling in Jaskier from the show.


	12. Chapter 12

Geralt awoke to the smell of vampire and leapt upright, stumbling when his limbs tangled on a corpse. Gods, if he was buried in bodies then he was probably already too late to save himself--and he reached to his back for his silver sword and found nothing, not even the hilt of his steel. Someone had stolen his swords! 

With a desperate flick of his wrist, Quen sprang into place around him. His eyes searched for cover, scanning everything--

And he saw Dettlaff and Regis blinking at him from his bed, wide-eyed and worried. 

“Fuck,” Geralt spat, closing his eyes again and sinking down to the ground as his knees gave out under him. “Fuck!”

He hid his face in his palms. It stank of vampire in here, thick and airless. Gods, their bodies had been cold, just like corpses. He couldn’t breathe. 

“More nightmares?” Regis asked, his voice disgustingly gentle. 

Geralt wanted to swear at him, only just managing to keep the words inside by biting hard at the inside of his cheek. Damn and blast, he was still godsdamned  _ naked. _ He’d fucked them, he’d  _ fucked _ them both, what had he been thinking?

“Geralt?” Regis said again, and this time Geralt snapped. 

“What?!” he shouted, staring wild-eyed at the vampire. “What do you--what...”

The words trailed off. Regis’s eyes were dark and Dettlaff’s eyes were light as they both looked at him. The rest of the room receded, leaving only those familiar faces and their contrasting eyes, light and dark. Geralt stared into them and breathed, heart slowing and limbs relaxing. It was fine. It was fine and he was safe--

He jerked his head to the side, clapping his hand over his eyes. 

“You’re fucking thralling me  _ now?” _ he snarled. “You gave me that whole fucking lecture about how it was a violation of free will and  _ now _ you--”

“No!” Regis said sharply. “You’ve been thralled before, haven’t you? Or talked to people who experienced it? You must have some idea of what it’s like.”

Geralt dragged his fingers through his hair before digging his fingers into his eyes. “Like drowning, but I couldn’t stop myself from enjoying it,” he hissed. Eskel had been forced to use Yrden on him to stop him from attacking their friends. Lambert and Vesemir together had taken down the Deathless who’d done it. 

“Did this feel like that?” Regis pressed. 

Geralt gritted his teeth. The answer was no, thrall hadn’t felt like this, but he couldn’t trust a vampire to tell the truth about thralling him. He’d  _ fucked _ them,  _ why _ had he done that? Had they thralled him into that too?

“Geralt, please,” Regis said again, this time with a note of pleading in his voice. “Please listen to me. We didn’t enthrall you--it’s just the bond. Nothing else. You  _ can _ feel us, can’t you?”

He knew Regis was right. He could feel there was no damage to his body, no gaps in his memory, and if they had been compelling him to do something, he wouldn’t feel like this. Instead, Geralt remembered how sweet he’d felt during the sex, and after. Thinking about it now, he realized that some of that must have been  _ their _ feelings filtering into him. 

As he focused on it, he  _ could _ feel them both. He could feel the fading relaxation in both their bodies as they grew more worried the longer he was silent. It was as though they were a part of him he’d forgotten he had, like the opposite of a phantom limb. 

He hadn’t wanted to feel them before. And now that he could, he knew he was intruding. 

Between the space of one breath and the next, his anger subsided into shame. 

He sagged and the breath went out of him. They’d only bonded to him in order to end the war and he’d taken advantage. They’d just been trying to do the right thing, just like he had been in coming here, and they’d ended up unintentionally offering him what no witcher was meant to have. He’d already stolen one family, binding Yen and Ciri to himself when he had no right to either. He couldn’t do it again. He wouldn’t allow himself. 

_ You’ve condemned yourself to me. _ Yen had told him when she’d realized what he’d done. Suddenly Geralt knew how she’d felt. Regis and Dettlaff had accepted him with absolutely nothing to gain, condemning themselves to a witcher’s lifetime with him. And while that might not be long compared to their lifespans, it was still a very, very long time. 

He pulled his attention away from them and closed the connection. It was like shutting his eyes, somehow. 

His hands and arms felt so heavy, as though they were pulling him down to the ground. He’d had good posture whipped into him as a child, but now it just felt like too much to maintain.

“Please go,” he told them. 

“Geralt--” Dettlaff started to say, but Geralt just shook his head, staring at the wall. 

“Please go,” he repeated. He had to get them away from him before he made this worse somehow. 

He listened to them rise from the bed, moving through the room to pick up their clothes. But before leaving, Dettlaff crossed behind Geralt to open the windows--airing out the vampire smell from Geralt’s room. 

It was such a kind gesture that Geralt felt even worse. His chest ached. 

They closed the door behind them. 

For a while he simply sat, unmoving, barely breathing. His thoughts moved slow, long gaps stretching out between them. 

What was he supposed to do now? If he left with Yennefer and Eskel when they arrived and went back to the life he was meant to lead, would that void the peace treaty? He’d have to ask Regis. 

He didn’t want to ask Regis. 

What life was even waiting for him now? If the war was over as it seemed to be, then what? Did he just return to his life on the Path as if nothing had happened? Was there even a Path for him to return to? Even if the vampire war was over, that just meant that the northern kingdoms were half-destroyed and in complete disarray. There was nothing left to stop Nilfgaard from completing Emhyr's attempted conquest of the North now that most of the work had been done for them. And even if Emhyr had suddenly discovered self-restraint, then half of the northern kings and their families were already dead, assassinated by vampires--which inevitably meant that there would be civil wars over the crowns. 

War where witchers  _ weren’t _ on the front lines to direct the disposal of corpses meant necrophages. It also meant that some of the unhappy dead becoming wraiths. It meant month after month (maybe year after year) of being underpaid and thus half-starved while witchers cleaned up the messes that humans had made for themselves. 

Fighting in the vampire war had at least given Geralt real purpose and meaning. But endless necrophages and wraiths...even if he fought them all, humans would just make more in another day, or week, or year. 

Geralt didn’t want it. He wasn’t supposed to think that about the Path, but he didn’t want it. Witchers weren’t meant to feel anything in order to want or not want. The fact that he did was nothing more than a mistake in his construction. But he didn’t want _any_ of it anymore. 

Eventually, Geralt dragged his body up onto its feet. He went to the washbasin, wet a cloth, and cleaned himself. They’d left no semen on him, but he wiped himself down anyway, feeling dirty in a way he was aware had nothing to do with the sex. 

He pulled clothes on. He didn’t bother with shoes. If he sat down to lace them up, he wouldn’t get back up again. 

Barefoot, he walked out of the house into the gardens, and then out of the gardens and into the woods. He walked until he reached a small stream, and then followed the stream until it tumbled down off the cliffs and into the ocean. Then he sat himself on a rock to stare out at the horizon. 

The vast empty expanse of it flowed past him. Summer was turning into fall now and gooseflesh raised on his skin. Even here in the mild south, he would soon need the heavier clothes in his wardrobe. 

Assuming he was allowed to stay here. Would he be welcome anymore after today?

But that was the wrong way to think of it, wasn’t it? Regis and Dettlaff were too kind to throw him out. Even Geralt couldn’t convince himself that they would reject him so wholly, no matter if they regretted fucking him. 

He closed his eyes. It felt good to imagine staying here. Having lessons with Kaelag, minding the pups, doing the dishes with Calliope, figuring out how to get Caileis to tolerate him. Hell, if he took the lesser vampires the liver from the next deer Rufus butchered, Geralt could probably get even the garkain to like him better. And if somehow Dettlaff and Regis  _ didn’t _ regret sleeping with him...

It was hard to imagine anyone, even a witcher,  _ not _ longing for a future full of that honey-bright feeling. Was that how it felt to be them? 

Before he could stop himself, he reached out through the bond. The feeling was not quite like anything else he’d ever experienced, and neither Nordling nor Nilfgaardian nor even Elder had the proper words with which to describe it. Yet it reminded Geralt a little of stretching his arm out while half-asleep in bed and feeling his palm land on soft familiar skin that breathed. 

From Regis Geralt could feel anxiety and confusion, softening into relief at the touch. From Dettlaff Geralt felt impatience and frustration. 

But he was intruding again. They had assumed until today that such a thing was impossible and thus had never discussed their feelings about the possibility with him. And he hadn’t asked for their permission. He again closed the bond.

When he realized that he’d have to face them and admit that he’d known all along that the bond had succeeded, his mind emptied completely, stretching as blank and flat as the ocean horizon. 

He watched the sunset turn the water into fire and gold until stones crunched behind him and he turned, left hand flexing automatically into Quen. 

Dettlaff stood on the mossy rocks, dressed in a ragged jacket and breeches, scowling down at him. 

“I’ve had my own moments of sitting out here and thinking about things, and so has Regis,” Dettlaff said in short, clipped tones. “Regis told me not to come out here. He said to just let you come back on your own. But it’s been hours and I want to know what went wrong.”

It was so perfectly blunt that Geralt couldn’t help but smile. He’d gone to Dettlaff first because Dettlaff didn't try to soften his real responses. Now, here they were. For a moment Geralt felt very fond. He could grow to love someone that honest.

Then Geralt sobered, remembering why he’d left. He turned his face back to the ocean. 

“I’m sorry,” he said. His chest started to ache again. He didn’t want to see Dettlaff’s face as he said this. “You two showed no serious interest in sleeping with me and I knew you were...compromised, because of the bond. I took advantage. It was wrong of me.”

_ “What?” _ Dettlaff hissed. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve heard in a long time.”

Twisting, Geralt looked up at him again. Dettlaff glared back, then moved down to where Geralt sat near the edge and crouched a few feet away from Geralt. Dettlaff was barefoot too, Geralt noted, clawed toes spreading out and gripping at the stones. 

“Did you really send us away and then come out here alone because of that?” Dettlaff demanded. “I’m not very good at interpreting what people are thinking, but even I wouldn’t have looked at the way we act around you and gotten that impression.”

“I just thought...” Geralt trailed off. He didn’t want to have to explain this. “Regis said that the bond made you two want me. I could tell you two were attracted to me, but I figured that it was like a compulsion. People under compulsion can’t consent. I didn’t really think about that till afterward.”

“Well that’s not how it works at all,” Dettlaff said. “And if you thought that, you should have just said, not done all this.”

“Yeah,” Geralt acknowledged, ducking his chin and feeling both chastised and fond all over again. “Maybe.”

“We thought you’d gone back to being disgusted by us,” Dettlaff went on. “That you’d satisfied your curiosity and regretted it.”

Wincing, Geralt shook his head. “No, that’s...” He sighed. “That’s the opposite of the problem.”

Even without whatever sense the bond gave him, Geralt felt Dettlaff’s attention sharpen at this. 

“Is it,” Dettlaff asked. “What does that mean?”

Geralt shivered. With the sun gone, the temperature was rapidly dropping as he wracked his mind to think of what to say to Dettlaff about what he felt. Half of his feelings weren’t even about them, really; Geralt was growing far too attached to the pups, and it was amazing not to be hungry and treated like shit all the time, and he loved the soft bed and getting to bathe every day. And as for Regis and Dettlaff themselves, well...if they hadn’t been vampires, Geralt would have been in love with them from the beginning. 

He didn’t know how to turn any of that into words that wouldn’t make Dettlaff angry or humiliate Geralt himself. But as he tried to find any way to explain himself, Dettlaff unbuttoned his jacket in businesslike movements, shrugged out of it, and wrapped it around Geralt’s shoulders. When Geralt looked up, certain that Dettlaff would be uncomfortable, Geralt realized all over again that Dettlaff had no gooseflesh and no nipples to harden because he was a vampire and anyway vampires weren’t as sensitive to cold. 

Geralt hadn’t forgotten that Dettlaff was a vampire, exactly, but it was still strange to be reminded of it in this way. 

“It means that probably we should continue this conversation with Regis, since he’s affected too,” Geralt said at last, both because it was true, and because he wanted a little longer to sort out his thoughts. 

But by the time they’d arrived back on the grounds, all Geralt had thought about was the silent padding of Dettlaff’s clawed feet, the cuts and bruises on Geralt’s own soles, and the fact that, just as Regis had said, Dettlaff did not seem at all interested in the scent of blood even though he could doubtless smell the broken skin. 

This fact became more evident when they got into the house and Dettlaff led them straight into the bathing chamber. At first Geralt felt some concern that among vampires, difficult conversations were had while naked, but the truth soon became obvious when Dettlaff took the small tub, filled it with water, and set it down in front of one of the chairs. 

“Wash your feet,” he said. “Humans don’t just heal.”

Snorting, Geralt shook his head. He thought about protesting that witchers weren't human and he wasn’t a child. But instead he just sat down on the chair and settled his feet into the cold water. He was still warm from the walk, so the coolness was soothing to his battered skin. 

Dettlaff seated himself against the wall, seemingly intent upon just watching Geralt do this. That was strange, but not bad, so Geralt said nothing about it. 

Just as Geralt had lifted one foot onto his knee to wash his sole, though, Regis appeared at the door. Geralt wouldn’t have known he was there if he hadn’t glanced up at just the right moment to see the vampire coalesce just outside the threshold.

Perhaps it was something about his stiff posture, or perhaps it was something creeping through the bond without Geralt intending to let it, but Geralt knew at once that Regis had spent this whole time fretting and full of self-doubt. 

Guilt settled into Geralt in a whole new way. “I’m sorry,” he ground out. “It was stupid of me to run off like that.”

“Yes,” Dettlaff said at the same time as Regis started to say, “No, it’s understandable.”

Geralt couldn’t help the huff of amusement that left him at this. He shook his head. 

“I appreciate that you’re trying to be kind to me, Regis, but Dettlaff’s right. Sometimes I’m just an asshole.”

Regis bit his lip. He didn’t seem to know how to respond to this. 

Dettlaff gestured at Regis. “The bond is making him fretful,” he said. “This uncertainty is...painful. It is hard not knowing where we stand with you.”

Wincing, Geralt filed that away for later. 

“You didn’t hurt me. I just...” Geralt began to say and then trailed off. How did you explain the unending terror of war to creatures who couldn’t die and didn’t experience pain the same way? They clearly felt anxiety and distress in similar ways to humans, but with bodies that were almost indestructible, violence would always mean something very different for them. 

“I woke up and thought it was the war,” Geralt said at last. They’d either understand that or they wouldn’t. “I smelled vampires and muscle memory took over.” He saw them both nod, seeming to accept this. “And then...then after that, I worried I’d taken advantage of the bond. Dettlaff says that’s stupid, but I’ve seen what magic can do to people.” 

At this, Regis shared a look with Dettlaff. Then Regis uncrossed his arms, planting his hands on his hips instead, and he let out a slow laugh. 

“Oh, is  _ that _ what distressed you so much?” he asked, moving further into the room to lean against the wall. “I don’t mean to be dismissive, but  _ honestly.” _

Geralt had been fine when it had been just Dettlaff, but now the mockery scraped at something raw inside him. He glared at both the vampires. Dettlaff just held out his arm at Regis, as if to say  _ Look, I was right, he agrees with me. _

“I don’t know how the bond works!” Geralt snapped, setting both feet back down into the tub with a splash that wetted his breeches. “I’ve had mages manipulate my body and mind like a puppet to make me do whatever they wanted! I’ve been thralled, too, so I know what it’s like to lose control of yourself to something that feels good! This might be just a nonsense idea to you, but it’s  _ been my life!” _

Both vampires sobered at this, the relieved humor leaving their faces. Regis swallowed, smoothing out the front of his tunic and then fiddling with a stray thread on one of the buttons. Dettlaff just went quiet and impossible to read.

“Sorry,” Dettlaff murmured.

“If that’s what you feared, then...I’m grateful that you felt concerned for us,” Regis said carefully. “I apologize for making fun of you. It’s just not something that would have occurred to us. Only the Elders are capable of controlling other vampires, and our Elder would never do such a thing.” 

Geralt recalled the title of ‘Southern Elder’ as the one who had orchestrated the peace. But before he could ask what Elders were, Regis continued. 

“Did you know before today that the bonds had worked? We can feel when you open the connection, you know. We had thought it failed because you weren’t a vampire, but then today...”

Geralt’s face flamed as he realized exactly when Regis must have felt him first access the bond. It hadn’t been intentional, but with the way Dettlaff had touched him, Geralt had apparently just opened up without realizing it. 

“I...” Geralt started to say. Some part of him still wanted to resist this, as though by refusing to talk about it, his connection to these two vampires would dissolve. But the rest of him didn’t want that, and anyway he owed them something. 

“During the ceremony,” he admitted. “I felt something then, with both of you. But then nothing, not till today. And today I wasn’t even thinking about it at all when it happened.”

This got a smile out of Regis. “The letter you received must have been very good news to get this response from you.”

Ducking his chin, Geralt picked at one thumbnail. Part of him said,  _ Don’t tell them. It’s information related to the war and they’re the enemy. _

Another part of him said,  _ Telling them about your other lovers will only upset them. They don’t need to know. _

And a third part of him said,  _ Eskel and Yen are on their way here. If you don’t tell them now and an angry witcher and sorceress show up on their doorstep, it will end in blood. _

“It was,” Geralt agreed instead. “Both of my lovers are alive, and some of my friends who I thought were dead were instead prisoners who have now been released.”

“That’s--” Regis started to say, wide-eyed. “All of that is amazing, but I’m caught on the fact that you have lovers!” Dettlaff’s gaze also focused on Geralt. “We weren’t sure.”

“Yeah, I...yeah. Sorry.”

This, Dettlaff waved away. 

“It is not a problem now. Will you go see them?”

Mind instantly racing, Geralt tried to puzzle out what this might mean. Not a problem  _ now. _ When would they decide it was a problem? Was saying that he would go see them the desired answer or would it enrage Dettlaff?

Finally, Geralt braced himself and just asked. “Am I allowed to leave?”

Glancing at Regis again, Dettlaff tentatively answered, “Yes?”

But Regis looked stricken. “Did you not think you were allowed?”

Shrugging, Geralt now felt obscurely embarrassed that he had, in fact, believed that until now. From their reaction, it seemed as though that had not been the intent. 

Regis moved forward, crossing to the low shelf of bathing supplies. He picked up one of the slivers of soap, bringing it to Geralt along with a towel. Geralt took them as Regis’s mouth and brows twisted into a knot of shame. 

“I keep finding out more things we’ve done wrong with you,” Regis sighed. “I should have found some way to tell you that you aren’t trapped here, that you could visit others as you pleased, but I worried that I would be unintentionally cruel in doing so. We were told that witchers lived solitary lives, and thus you wouldn’t _have_ anyone to go to. I thought that was probably incorrect, and that you had to at least be close to your other witchers, but then so many witchers died in the war, and, well...” Regis winced, and Geralt felt strange as Regis paced back and forth. He looked how Geralt felt. Geralt both hated him for it and felt relieved that he wasn’t the only one.

“We were told all sorts of things and didn’t know what to believe,” Regis said, crossing his arms tight over his chest again. “At the summit when we settled on you as the best candidate, some of those present informed us that witchers were incapable of love, while others said that you specifically had been in love with a sorceress for thirty years, that you had slept with every sorceress on the continent, that you only slept with other witchers, that you slept with all sorts of creatures, that you had a daughter, that you were sterile and couldn’t have children, and a host of other things which could not all be true at the same time and which were mostly none of our business. I...” 

Regis swore in Rasna, pushing his hands through his hair. “I talk so much and I  _ still _ can’t think of the right things to say to you most of the time!” His shoulders hunched, hands dragging down to cover his face. 

Rising, Dettlaff went over to Regis and took his gloved hands, placing them on Dettlaff’s chest. From the way they looked at one another, the gesture seemed to mean something. Geralt looked away from the intimate moment. 

Uncertain what to do, Geralt spent a while just lathering his hands before lifting his foot onto his knee again and beginning to wash it. The dirt and blood on his soles were well soaked now. As he pushed his fingers between his toes, a hundred things to say lined up behind his teeth. He didn’t say any of them. They all seemed wrong. 

Facts, he told himself at last. Start with just facts. 

“I have two lovers, both of whom intend to come here after seeing to the release of prisoners on our side,” he stated, because that was true and they needed to know it. “I don’t think they will arrive here for another month, but I cannot be certain of that fact.”

As he said it, an even worse fact occurred to him: if he intended to do anything other than leave this place and never come back,  _ he would have to find some way to explain all this to Yennefer and Eskel.  _

This realization was so terrible that it scattered the rest of his thoughts apart immediately. They would think that he’d been thralled. Of course they would, how could they possibly think otherwise? And with that being a given, how was Geralt supposed to convince them that this was a good place with good people in it? Regis and Dettlaff were human in the best ways. They loved their children, they enjoyed food and stories and sex, they worked and kept pets and lived quiet, peaceful lives. And they had bound themselves to a dangerous stranger just to protect people they would likely never even meet. 

It had taken Geralt all this time just to remember what had been so obvious to him for most of his life: that some ‘monsters’ were just people like any others. And today, with the news that the war was over and Regis and Dettlaff’s efforts had come to fruition, Geralt was at last understanding that they weren’t just people, they were people he  _ admired and liked.  _

But if Geralt tried to say that to Eskel and Yen, he’d sound like a hopeless victim who’d been magicked into believing himself in love with his captors. 

“They could stay here,” Dettlaff offered, seemingly unaware of Geralt’s inner turmoil. “The estate has plenty of space.”

Dettlaff had no idea what he was offering. But the fact that he would offer at all even after all his experiences with Geralt was just another sign of what Dettlaff was really like. 

“Maybe,” Geralt hedged, horrified by the idea of having to introduce Yen to everyone here. It would have been bad enough even if he hadn’t slept with anyone, but now...

He finished washing his feet, then dried them off and hung the towel on the rack by the door. And since his breeches were wet, he took them off too. His tunic covered him, and anyway he had no real modesty left to defend with these two. 

Facts, he told himself again. Stick to just sharing facts and getting facts. 

“If I were to sleep with other lovers, would that nullify the peace treaty?” he asked, since that was now looming in his mind at the prospect of seeing Eskel and Yen again. 

“No,” Regis sighed, rubbing at his face again. “No, it wouldn’t. This isn’t some royal marriage where paternity needs to be clear. Our culture does not place much value upon monogamy.” 

Geralt supposed that made sense. No one had seemed to take any issue with the fact that Dettlaff and Regis were both already mated to each other when sending Geralt to them. 

“And what about my horse and blades and armor,” Geralt pushed on. “If I were to fetch them, would that be acceptable?” Geralt had deposited his belongings in a bank in Beauclair and left Roach in a stable for couriers at the border of Nazair. He’d paid the couriers for six months of their stables and horse-care services, and told them that if he didn’t come back by then, to sell Roach to someone responsible. 

The possibility of having Roach and his swords back filled Geralt with a kind of desperate longing. Even if he only used Roach to go to the market and only used his swords for drills, that would still be so much better. 

He understood why he’d been stripped of them and his armor and told to wear the wedding clothes. Until he’d actually gone through with the ceremony--until he’d drunk their blood and let them  _ bind _ themselves to him--he’d been an enemy combatant brought into a peaceful territory. And of course others had not been allowed to come with him, either, because even a witcher unarmed still had weapons, and more than one witcher together was a hostile force. 

But now Dettlaff nodded again. “You’d have to work out the logistics of feeding it. Talk to Tiorsale. She’s the one who manages the care of our current one. And the blades--the babies will be curious. I’ll have to tell them to leave them alone, just like the kitchen knives and the herb garden.”

Curious enough to be derailed briefly by this, Geralt asked, “How does that even work? They’re babies. When I tell them to do things they don’t care.”

This got a rare, warm smile out of Dettlaff. “It works because I’m their Elder. When I tell them to stay away from the knives and poisonous plants, they listen.”

Narrowing his eyes, Geralt was relieved the conversation had come back to this without him forcing it. “When you say that, I get the impression that you don’t just mean someone who’s older than them. I take it that Elder is a title of some import among vampires? Apparently also with some power incumbent in it, if you can make even children obey.”

“Oh,” Regis said, a very small, single noise that communicated sudden realization. “Oh, there’s so much we never bothered to explain, isn’t there. I thought--I thought you must have discovered some of it during the war.”

Geralt shook his head. Information during the war had been sparse at best.

“Come,” Regis said, moving over to the door. “Go put on some fresh breeches. If you’ll meet me in the library, I’ll try to explain what I should have told you from the beginning.”


	13. Chapter 13

Geralt put on not only fresh breeches but a fresh tunic and socks as well. If the pups decided to interrupt, he didn’t want them being upset by anything he might feel. Thus armored, he took himself to the library. 

There, Dettlaff and Regis sat murmuring quietly to one another in Rasna. Their voices were too low and Geralt was too unfamiliar with the language to know what they were saying, but it was easy to interpret the way they had their chairs pulled up right beside each other, heads leaned together and fingers entwined. Geralt knew he had been asked to come here, but he still felt as though he were intruding. The feeling only intensified when they saw him and moved apart. 

“All right,” Regis said, spreading his hands on his thighs and looking as though he were bracing himself. Geralt noted the way that Regis couldn’t seem to meet his eyes and Dettlaff was staring at the wall. Grabbing one of the upholstered chairs, Geralt brought it over to where the other two sat. He wanted to give his backside a break after the hard rocks and cold dirt of the cliffside.

Taking a deep breath, Regis held it for a moment before he began, “It is perhaps useful to start before the war, with some information about how our kind is...organized.” Regis’s eyes skittered over the room, resting on nothing. “Vampires in this world have but one true law: do not kill kin. The edict is the product of the Conjunction, which tore some of us from our world and stranded us in this one. Finding ourselves trapped here, it became crucial that we not destroy one another, lest a final few of us end up wholly alone in the world.” At this, Regis held up a hand as if to stave off some imagined criticism. “I know it must seem ridiculous to fear being alone in a world filled with millions of intelligent beings.”

Narrowing his eyes, Geralt shook his head. “No. I’ve been alone around humans for most of my life, and that’s even having started off human.”

Dettlaff didn’t respond to this but Regis did, sagging a little and letting his eyes close for a moment. “I should have expected that you would understand. But the real problem is that vampires have always thought that we and we alone are worthy of consideration or capable of creating real companionship. This is what I once believed, until about a hundred years ago.”

“How old are you?” Geralt asked, unable to help interrupting.

“In my fifth century. Four hundred and thirty-three years old, to be exact, though every decade or so I forget and have to do the maths. And Dettlaff is just shy of four hundred.”

With some shock Geralt realized that Dettlaff and Regis were older than even Vesemir, who had been over three hundred when he’d died. Geralt had known that the vampires were likely very old, but he hadn’t realized just how much. 

“At less than half a millennia I am still considered young by the standards of my people,” Regis continued. “And it means that I was born here, in this world, never having known our home. Which was for me, as for many of my kin, I think, the crux of the problem.”

Geralt raised his eyebrows. Regis didn’t see it, looking over at the shelves. 

“Our shapeshifting is only truly meant for short periods, in an environment very different from this one. It requires effort to maintain a human shape,” Regis explained, shaking his head. “On top of that, vampires are not wanted or welcome here. We have chiefly survived in this world by pretending to be humans and elves and anything but what we are.” Regis cast a forlorn look at Geralt. “Perhaps you will not understand. But...Geralt, imagine the least comfortable situation you could ever find yourself in. I don’t mean a moment of peril with death knocking at your door, just...a circumstance of great unease. Now imagine you’re stuck there. Not for an hour, not for an evening, but for all time. And should you fall out of character for but a moment, people will scream ‘Monster, monster!’ and they’ll turn on you and cut you to shreds.”

Narrowing his eyes, Geralt sat back in his seat. “I don’t have to imagine what it’s like to be hated as a monster. That’s been most of my life. People detest witchers even as we die to protect them! In the war, humans sacrificed us first and gave us least consideration--us and the elder races.”

“But that is rather my point,” Regis said.  _ “You _ have not bothered to try to hide what you are--cannot, perhaps, because of your trade. You wear your difference openly. But vampires have hidden instead." Geralt nodded at this. "At first, I’m told, the concealment was in the hope that a second Conjunction would soon take us home. But it’s been a long, long time now, and despite the fact that hiding was meant to be a temporary solution, it’s become a way of life.” Regis sighed, leaning forward to put his elbows on his knees. “None of this would be an issue if we were solitary creatures. But we are not. We are social creatures just as humans are, and isolation destroys us just as surely as it does humans.”

“I understand that, but I don’t see how it relates to Elders, which is why you brought me here...?” Geralt trailed off. 

Running one hand through his hair, Regis looked distraught. “I am sorry. I’ve never had to describe this to anyone but Kaelag before, and absolutely never in Nordling. This information is...very private. I would not wish to share it with anyone who wasn’t a vampire, but you...you are of our blood. So it is important that you understand.”

Nodding, Geralt settled himself back in his seat. There was a lot about witchers he wouldn’t want to explain to outsiders either.

“There are very few of us, compared to humans,” Regis continued. “Most of my kind are isolated, unhappy, because the few vampires we encounter in our lives may not suit us as companions. The possible companionship we do have--humans, elves, and so forth--requires us to hide everything real about ourselves. How much companionship can you truly get from someone who knows nothing about your true self?” Regis looked grim. Dettlaff just watched him, silent. 

“Now add to that isolation the fact that our essence is so different from other creatures here that the blood of those from worlds other than our own--humans, yes, but also elves, dwarves, and witchers--is extraordinarily addictive and intoxicating.” Regis sat back in his seat, regarding Geralt thoughtfully. “Imagine groups of humans who are constantly miserable and constantly surrounded by free alcohol. What would you expect to happen, especially if they’re moving among people they view as less worthy than them?”

Geralt shook his head. “I don’t have to imagine that either. I’ve seen humans turn on their non-human neighbors over and over again, somehow blaming them for their misfortune. And drinking just makes it worse.”

“Exactly!” Regis cried, throwing his hands out. “You begin to understand the bomb we have been sitting upon all this time." He grimaced. "Now, I am not making excuses. Many creatures feel uncomfortable or lonely all their lives without committing genocide. This war has been caused by bigotry, selfishness, and greed, just like most other wars. But all this is what caused my kin to say: well, if we are lonely and tired of hiding, then we will not hide. We will instead rule and create a society just for us!”

Given what Regis had just described, it was easy to picture. Geralt had seen people grow violent with far less cause. 

“And your part in all this?” Geralt prompted gently. 

“About a century ago,” Regis said, “I was doing...poorly. By which I mean I had drained several people and was so drunk that I crashed into something while flying, broke a variety of bones, and while waiting for them to heal, a group of angry humans caught me, cut my head off, and buried it at a crossroads drenched in holy water.” Geralt’s eyebrows lifted but Regis just shook his head in disgust. “It took me fifty years to regrow my body enough to dig myself out and drag myself into the nearby woods, and in that time, I had nothing to do but think about my own actions. It was during that half-century that I decided not to drink blood anymore. And when I was healed enough to walk, I made my way south to my Elder.”

_ “Your _ Elder?” Geralt said, sensing that this was the start of another long explanation. 

Dettlaff closed his eyes and Regis winced, clearly uncomfortable. “I am relieved that your information during the war turned up no mention of this, but perhaps I shouldn’t be. All this could have been prevented if we had ever tried to share ourselves with humans. Well, then--surely you  _ are _ aware that every individual  _ tiur-ziva _ has a certain strength or talent?” 

Geralt nodded. The vast differences between what each  _ tiur-ziva _ was capable of was part of what had made it so difficult to classify them as a single species for so long. 

“In our world, we lived in large societies, where different talents would be put to different purposes. Mine is the ability to communicate with animals, for example,” Regis said, and Geralt blinked in surprise--whatever he’d expected Regis to say, this wasn’t it. All he could think was that this meant Regis could talk at  _ anything.  _

“A very,  _ very _ rare few are born with the ability to command and control other vampires,” Regis went on. “Though, saying it that way makes it sound more cruel than it usually is. I would describe it as a kind of herd instinct or family impulse, but that vastly undersells the power of it.”

Geralt’s eyes snapped to Dettlaff, who sat watching Geralt with his usual unreadable expression. “Are you...?” Geralt asked. 

“I will be someday,” Dettlaff answered, and when this got a perplexed look from Geralt, Regis stepped in again. 

“A vampire’s power increases with age, and Dettlaff is, comparatively speaking, very young. He is the only one with this power born within the Garasham Clan since the Conjunction, and one of only four with the ability this side of the Blue Mountains. But most would not yet call him an Elder.”

“So,” Geralt said slowly. “That means all the vampires on the continent--Nilfgaard, the North, all of it--are ruled by only four vampires?”

“Three Elders, yes,” Regis nodded. “And, now, Dettlaff. His sphere of influence is relatively small--just Nazair, currently--but it will expand with time.” 

Now genuinely surprised, Geralt turned a thoughtful eye on Dettlaff. “So you’re something like a prince.”

This got a dismissive snort and a curl of his lip. “No. Human royalty rules because they use money and lies to convince people that they are special in some way. Our Elders rule by their connection to their people. By attracting to them those who will flourish in their presence.”

“So...different Elders, then, means different types of individuals to live in their domain?” Geralt said slowly, looking between the vampires to see if he was understanding.

“Correct,” Regis said. “The entire war has been the result of the action or inaction of two Elders: the one in the far north, in Kovir, and the one in Beauclair.” He looked genuinely very uncomfortable now, tapping his nails on the arm of his chair. “The Northern Elder thinks non-vampires are worthless, good for nothing except providing amusement. The Midlands Elder wants nothing to do with this world and simply waits for the next Conjunction so he can return home. The war was started by the Northern Elder and his flock, but many from among the flock of the Midlands Elder were swept up by their northern kin and whipped into a frenzy of dissatisfaction and unhappiness.”

“And the south?” Geralt asked, caught up in information he hadn’t even known he’d wished to hear. 

“Ah, the south,” Regis smiled. “All of the Nilfgaardian Empire is the domain of a very ancient Elder. She was old even before the Conjunction, and is now very, very powerful indeed. She is the most powerful of our kind in this world by far. And more importantly to you, she has, in certain circles, been called the Humanist.”

The significance of an Elder who could be titled anything remotely like that was not lost on Geralt. So  _ that _ was the Southern Elder who had commanded the war to end, and arranged his symbolic union with Regis and Dettlaff.

“She has taken the stance that humanity is a species capable of insight and emotion equal to ours,” Regis explained. “Which to her means viewing humans as potential companions and mates, however briefly they may stay in our lives.” Hearing this, Geralt wondered if Regis knew how long witchers actually lived. “Without her approval and command, none of this would have been possible. If it had just been Dettlaff and myself acting alone, then Dettlaff taking a human bondmate would still have been of great import. But it would not have been enough to end the war.”

As all this sank in, Geralt realized that he was very, very angry. Sweat prickled along his hairline and the folds of his hands, and his slow heart beat hard under his breastbone. It was appalling beyond words to know that all the death and violence he had seen in the last five years could have been avoided if just  _ two vampires _ had been born with different talents, or had held even the least regard for species other than their own. 

But then, many human kings had led armies against their neighbors for causes even less worthy than pervasive isolation and homesickness. Ciri’s own father by birth had conquered all of Cintra trying to reobtain his child after abandoning her.

Rather than talk about any of that, though, Geralt sighed and told them, “Compared to you, most humans do have very short lives. Even compared to me, really--I’ve watched my human friends age at a rate that alarms me. But you’ve got me for a long time yet.” When Dettlaff straightened a little at this and Regis gave Geralt a look of surprise, he explained, “A witcher’s lifespan is, if not shortened by violence, centuries long.” Shaking his head, he finished, “You probably would have been better off picking a human. You’d have to put up with much less of...” he waved between them, trying to indicate everything that had happened since he’d arrived at their gates.

But rather than smiling or laughing in acceptance of this, both vampires looked concerned. Regis lifted a hand as if to reach out to Geralt with it. But then he withdrew, lacing his hands together in his lap instead. 

“You’re a far better mate for us than we could ever have dreamed,” Regis said, seeming to study his own socks. Geralt’s chest tightened and he stared at the vampire. But before Geralt could respond to this startling statement, Regis changed the subject. 

“Anyway, that is beside the point. We were discussing the Humanist--which means that you should know that at some point, Dettlaff and I may be summoned to meet her again. She is very invested in how we are all proceeding in our bonding. She might summon you, too, either through us or, since you have our blood in you and the bond has worked, you may even feel the summons as we do.”

Geralt’s mind was still stuck on the first thing that Regis had said and it took him a moment to even process what had come after. 

“So, not just a polite letter in the mail, then?” he asked. 

“No,” Regis said with a soft smile. “She has no use for such things. If an Elder summons you, you know, no matter how far apart you are.”

Geralt was caught up in looking at Regis and the sweet expression on his face, so it took Geralt a moment to notice that Dettlaff was swaying back and forth. Not swaying like a human when drunk, but a rhythmic rocking that had started small and was getting more pronounced. He had his eyes closed.

“Oh,” Regis breathed, seeming to notice Dettlaff just when Geralt did. “What is it, my heart?”

“Are you going to leave?” Dettlaff asked, and clearly meant Geralt. “When you arrived I wished you would. Then I could have just dreamed about you sometimes because of the bond. I could have coped with that. But if you go now...” He rocked harder, and when Regis tried to lay a hand on his shoulder, Dettlaff shook it off. Spots bloomed along the sides of his face and his teeth lengthened. “No! You keep saying we need to wait to let him adjust, and you were right, but how am _ I _ supposed to adjust to having our  _ bonded mate _ leave?” Dettlaff cried, and then gripped his hands hard enough that his claws broke through his gloves and skin and he started to bleed. 

Even knowing that wounds were functionally meaningless to a  _ tiur-ziva, _ the sight of that blood distressed Geralt. Perhaps that was Dettlaff’s changing face evoking residual fear, or maybe it was Geralt’s memory of drinking that blood himself. But it was that same blood, Geralt realized, which he himself and Regis and the pups had all drunk--making them  _ all _ of one blood. 

The vampires believed in that, found meaning in it, and in that moment Geralt realized that maybe he should, too. Seeing Dettlaff’s distress at the idea of Geralt leaving, Geralt really  _ thought _ about those bonds. 

Being a witcher had always meant, for him, being abandoned and unwanted. Even by his own mother, who had  _ known _ that most children left to the witchers died horrible deaths. The pain of that was so old that Geralt barely even thought of it anymore. Just as he rarely let himself think about how much he  _ hated _ being a witcher. He hated being asked to shed his own blood for no real reward in the service of those who despised him. 

He had been told his whole life that witchers didn’t love, didn’t have families, and he had believed it for far too long. He had torn love and family out of a harsh world that had not meant for him to have it, and been forced to fight to protect it every step of the way. 

But Dettlaff and Regis had just automatically offered him  _ everything _ he had been forced to scrabble and clutch at for so long everywhere else. They asked only that he not hurt them and theirs as they welcomed him into their home and family. 

Looking at the blood dripping from Dettlaff's hands into his lap, where it stained the dull brown fabric of his breeches, Geralt realized that this marriage wasn’t another example of him being forced to sacrifice himself, but was instead one of the rare, shocking times in which he had been gifted something of real worth. 

Which meant that this was something he could ruin and lose--in this case through callousness or his own idiocy, probably. Strange, Geralt thought, that he might be capable of wounding someone who could heal from anything. 

“I don’t want to leave,” he said, discovering it was true as he said it. Moving forward off his chair, he crouched in front of Dettlaff, taking his bloodied hands. To his surprise, Dettlaff let him, gaze fixing hungrily onto Geralt’s face. “I don’t know what will happen, but I...I don’t want to leave.”

Dettlaff let out a shuddering breath. He opened his hands, already healed, and grasped his sticky-gloved palms around Geralt’s. 

“I don’t know how to talk to you,” Dettlaff confessed. “I have never been good with words. But I think about you all the time.”

“Oh,” Geralt said, surprised. “I had no idea.”

“And I talk too much,” Regis admitted, with a self-effacing smile. “When I’m nervous, I talk. Or, well...I don’t wish to deceive you, I am loquacious at the best of times. But I find it very difficult to stop myself when I’m nervous, and so far, I have nearly always been nervous around you.” He met Geralt’s eyes, his thin face anxious and afraid. He gestured between them. “I know that this was meant to be just...politics. For me personally it was meant as penance, too, in an effort to make up for my past. But...when you’re at ease, Geralt, when you let yourself relax around us, this doesn’t feel like any kind of punishment. And no matter what we intended, the bond doesn’t feel just political.”

One corner of Dettlaff’s mouth curled upward then, and the look he turned on Regis was very fond. Geralt wondered if he, too, might be allowed to grow used to having Dettlaff look at  him that way. And if Regis might hold Geralt in that sort of regard, too. 

When Dettlaff turned back toward Geralt the softness stayed in his face. “Why can’t you just stay?”

Wincing a little, Geralt looked at Dettlaff’s hands. At the pronounced knuckles and elongated fingers, and the nails that were edging into becoming claws. He thought about what those traits meant, and what they’d meant to him when he arrived, and what they might mean to him in the future. He thought too about taking the gloves off, licking the smears of blood from the palms and running his tongue between the fingers where Dettlaff was so exquisitely sensitive. 

“When my lovers arrive, they will think that you have thralled me,” Geralt explained. “That I cannot possibly have entered into any sort of connection with you willingly.” He sighed. “When I left Beauclair, I thought that at best, this would be like Tesham Mutna, and you would keep me locked up and thralled to be bled for your amusement. And at worst...well. I’ve seen how people die when vampires get angry.”

Regis’s face went grim and tight. Dettlaff’s expression blanked, unreadable, which Geralt was starting to wonder about. He thought that blankness might mean that Dettlaff was actually feeling something strongly enough that he was overwhelmed and didn’t know what to do with his face anymore. 

“Yes,” Regis said quietly. “That is rather what I imagined you expected of us. I am honestly surprised that after seeing Tesham Mutna you have extended any trust to us at all. I cannot blame you or those close to you for thinking the worst of us.”

“One of them is a sorceress, Yennefer,” Geralt explained. “She will not violate the peace treaty, but if she suspects that I am being hurt and realizes that taking me away will  _ not _ cause the bloodshed to restart, she may very well just abscond with me no matter what I have to say on the matter. But...” as he spoke, Geralt realized exactly what he needed to do. “But if I allow her to look into my mind, she’ll know I’m not lying. So when she comes, I’ll do that.”

Dettlaff nodded, still blank-faced, but he let out a deep breath in a way that looked like relief. Regis gave a slow smile, his slanting front teeth just showing through his lips. 

“And your other lover?” he asked. 

“Another witcher, named Eskel.”

“Dettlaff is right, there is plenty of room in the house,” Regis told him softly. “And we have already weathered one angry witcher. So long as we take care of Kaelag, I think we could weather another, and a sorceress.” Ruefully he shook his head. “You’ll have a better sense of what to tell them than I had with you. Hopefully they will not suffer as much.”

Thinking of Yen, another question occurred to Geralt. For some reason he didn’t want to get back up, so he just sat down on the floor at their feet. 

“Won’t you be jealous? If my other lovers are here.”

Dettlaff shrugged. “Yes. But if I felt certain of you, that wouldn’t matter very much. Jealousy is only a feeling that comes and goes.”

Geralt had never heard anything quite like that said aloud before. It surprised him what a relief it was to hear.

“I also have...” He started to say, and then stopped himself. Did he trust them with Ciri's life, truly? For a moment he teetered on the knife-edge before realizing how selfish he was being. They had brought a monster-killer around their babies for no immediate reward--how much more trust could they possibly display before he offered up some of his own? 

“I also have a daughter,” Geralt said at last. “Grown, now. She may come too. Though she is witcher-trained, she hasn’t been physically altered as I was.”

Geralt half expected a response. Some sign that they knew who his daughter was and understood the political import of her. 

But Regis only kept smiling and Dettlaff raised his eyebrows a little in an expression of interest. That was all. 

**

They spent the rest of the evening talking. Knowing what the vampires were feeling under the surface made a startling difference to every interaction. Geralt started noticing that sometimes when Regis talked there was a kind of pressure to it, as though he were losing control of his mouth. And Geralt had mostly only seen Dettlaff while he was doing something else with his hands, whether painting or eating or making love to Regis. When unoccupied, he fidgeted a great deal, as though anxious or overwhelmed. 

That night the vampires did not ask Geralt to share their bed. They had already seen what happened to him when he fell asleep with vampires. He had nightmares anyway. 

The next day, however, Geralt invited them back to his own bed. It was in the afternoon again, when they were all warm and soft in the studio, and Geralt was sweating, and he saw their eyes again fall heavy and hot on him and he remembered how good they had been before. 

This time, with Regis there to begin with, things moved more quickly. Regis kissed him hungrily and went straight from there to Geralt’s cock. 

Geralt didn’t mind the direct approach. He had his first climax in Regis’s mouth while Dettlaff kissed him sweetly all over his face. 

After that, too curious to wait any longer, Geralt asked to be fucked. Some time later, lying on his side with one leg over Regis’s shoulder and Regis’s mouth slick around him, as Dettlaff pushed with slow caution into Geralt, Geralt discovered that vampires fucked differently too. Even having seen the shape of their cocks, Geralt had still unconsciously expected that they’d fuck him like most other men fucked him. But he was tight, and those little cilia were made of thin, delicate flesh. So instead of fast, sharp thrusts, it was instead a slow, incremental, teasing fuck. 

It was maddening. It was delicious. It was almost meditative. Geralt wanted Dettlaff to change his cock to a more human one and put his back into it properly. Geralt also wanted Dettlaff to keep doing what he was doing forever. The slick flattening of each of those little shapes as they pushed into him and then the slow spill of them back out of him took up Geralt's whole mind.

Afterward, when not just Dettlaff but Regis had taken their turns, Geralt lay and stared at the ceiling. Regis and Dettlaff did too. 

“Were you aware that human sexual fluids have an impact on vampires too?” Regis asked at last in a conversational tone. Geralt blinked, his delighted mental replay of the last hour interrupted by this statement. “It’s nothing like the effect of human blood, of course. Altogether a different sort of feeling, and it means that it’s safe for me to do this with you. Blood made me feel all-powerful, strong and reckless and impulsive--or, well. It made me stupid and violent, mostly. But this just makes me feel warm and slow.”

“Wait,” Geralt said, still trying to gather his brain back up from between his legs. “Are you saying that my semen makes you  _ high?” _

“Well, in so many words...yes, actually," Regis let out a little laugh. "Not just semen, though. All your sexual fluids, and those of other genital shapes. A great deal of it is just filtered blood with some different chemicals and bits added into it.”

Pushing himself up onto one elbow, Geralt looked between the two vampires. “Is that why you seem to like ingesting it so much? I thought it was just...I don’t know...sexy to you.”

This startled a huff of laughter out of Dettlaff.  “It’s that, too. But it also makes us feel good.”

“Can I...?” Geralt asked, gesturing between them to indicate the bond. 

Dettlaff looked confused, but Regis nodded.  “Yes,” he invited. “Feel it for yourself.”

It took a little bit of focus to open the way between them this time. But there was that feeling again--like sunlight through honey, warm and slow and golden.

“My fucking  _ semen _ makes you feel like that,” Geralt said, incredulous. 

“Well, no, some of that is just the sex,” Regis laughed. “But there’s a reason some vampires who engage with humans and elves and such would rather use their mouths on them for purposes other than biting.”

For a moment Geralt felt sick. As soon as he heard it, he knew that some of the people in Tesham Mutna (and wherever else Jens and Slava and Aiden and the others had been kept) had been thralled into doing this. The idea of it was monstrous.

But it wasn’t happening now, Geralt told himself. He had a great deal of practice at shutting certain thoughts away when they were unwanted, and he did it again now. 

Regis’s mouth was still gentle when Geralt kissed it again. That was what mattered. 


	14. Chapter 14

A week later, Geralt was at the table eating dinner when gooseflesh rose all over his body all at once. A rush of sensation went down his spine, followed by a kind of ecstatic shiver. As though synchronized, Regis and Dettlaff both straightened in their seats and their heads turned south. 

Geralt’s fork dropped from his hand to his plate with a clatter. “What is--” he gasped. He collapsed against the back of his chair as into his mind came the knowledge: In three days, he needed to be in the forest near the southern border of Nazair. 

Caileis stared at him in shock and Calliope also went wide-eyed with interest. Dettlaff just laid his hand over Geralt’s. 

“Our Elder calls us,” Dettlaff said quietly. 

Stunned, Geralt sat panting and staring at the ceiling. He felt almost...bereft, now, as though something of great importance had come and gone from him. 

“The fact that you felt it so clearly is fascinating,” Regis added. “I would assume it is because of our blood in you from the bond, but possibly there is also some vampiric aspect used to mutate witchers? I wonder if unbonded witchers could be summoned as well...?”

“Might be some--” Geralt swallowed, struggling to keep words strung together in his mind or mouth. “Might be some vampire mutagens in what was used to mutate me a second time. Or just in the basic formula the Wolf School used.”

“A _second_ time!” Regis cried, clearly interested. Kaelag, too, perked up his ears. 

As Geralt explained this, his heart rate slowed back to normal. But he could not stop thinking of the command. 

That night, Regis and Dettlaff came to Geralt’s room with bags so he could pack some of his clothes into them alongside theirs. They would depart tomorrow morning. 

**

Dettlaff was, it turned out, a great deal more attached to his creature comforts while traveling than Geralt himself. Among the clothes and other items needed for travel, Dettlaff packed a sketchbook and a pair of novels for Regis to read aloud, and into the cart also went a set of cushions, so that Dettlaff and a second person could sit comfortably in the bed of the cart while someone else drove. As they set out onto the road, Dettlaff did just that, nesting himself comfortably in the bed of the cart. Regis went with him, letting Geralt drive. 

It contrasted sharply with Geralt’s memory of his first trip with Regis to the market. That first time, Geralt’s fear and distrust had been sharp as a knife between them, an agonizing experience of imminent threat. Now...well. 

Now, Geralt’s two husbands sat peaceably in the cart behind him. Dettlaff’s pencil scratched over the leaves of paper, and Regis’s familiar voice rolled out in the calm cadence of his reading. 

It was a surprise, though, to see Dettlaff fully dressed for the time. Until now, it hadn’t really occurred to Geralt how informal Dettlaff’s mode of dress had always been at home. He wore loose, frumpy trousers and shirts around the house, when he bothered with shirts at all. Geralt suspected that without his own presence, Dettlaff might not bother even with trousers. Dettlaff’s preference was clearly for comfort rather than looks. But now that they would soon be confronted with other people, he wore a brocaded tunic of deep blood red, tight black breeches that hugged his long legs, fine black leather boots, and a long black leather coat with what seemed to Geralt to be a really unnecessary number of buckles. Geralt had previously never seen such a quantity of black leather on anyone who wasn’t a witcher. 

The effect of these clothes, combined with Dettlaff’s height, pale skin, blue eyes, and dark hair, was both dramatic and eye-catching in the extreme. It transformed Dettlaff from the comfortable father and artist Geralt had seen so far into a dramatic, eccentric lordling with an air of mystery. 

It also made him even more attractive. Geralt had found Dettlaff compelling even in his comfortable house-clothes. Now, Dettlaff looked like a man absolutely capable of ravishment and exotic pleasures. Hopefully Dettlaff could be convinced to make good on that impression as soon as they had the privacy of an inn tonight. 

When they grew closer to the village, both vampires got out of the cart to walk. There were fewer people in the streets as it wasn’t market day, but still enough that Geralt got to watch how people greeted Regis with warmth and Dettlaff with the respectful suspicion of commoners towards nobility they hardly ever saw. Their eyes followed Dettlaff, caught on both his unusual appearance and his unfamiliarity, and people talked about him with much the same intrusive, suspicious speculation as they did Geralt himself. 

It was not helped by Dettlaff’s silence. He did not greet people unprompted, he said little to anyone, and was generally interpreted as haughty, distant, and thus suspect. One person, outside of human hearing but well within the auditory range of their little trio, said, “Gods, he don’t half look like what he is, don’t he? Regis is just soft, you know, but Lord van der Eretein--no wonder we ain’t had trouble with monsters in a hundred years since he moved in.” 

Geralt wondered then if the dramatic clothes were a kind of social armor to deter people from interacting with Dettlaff more closely. Or perhaps Dettlaff merely had a hitherto-unseen dramatic side that made him the sort to dress that way once necessity prompted him to do so. 

Either way, the unfriendliness of the locals made Geralt thankful that the Elder had not called them any earlier. If he’d seen this during his first weeks here, he would have taken it as proof that Dettlaff was abusing the locals in some way. Now, it was obvious to Geralt that the tension Dettlaff’s presence evoked was only because, as another vampire had apparently said of Dettlaff, he was an awkward recluse who was not good at smalltalk. 

They spent the night in an inn together. It reminded Geralt of many similar nights with Jaskier and even Eskel and Lambert and Coen and his fellow witchers, whenever he had encountered any of them on the Path. And just as with his fellow witchers, Geralt ended up getting righteously ploughed face-down in the bed. If it was with fingers rather than anything else, well. Geralt was open-minded.

By noon on the third day they reached the forest on the southern border of Nazair. The ancient redwoods towered above them, and Geralt felt the weight of years here as the road leading south through the forest into Metinna wound through the massive trunks. Even beyond the astonishing trees, which Geralt had never seen anything like before, Geralt could feel that they were nearing their destination, though if asked how he knew he wouldn’t have been able to say. Perhaps it was a witcher sense, perhaps he was feeling something through the bond, or perhaps it was the presence of the Elder herself, tangible even at this distance. 

By the time they tied the horse at the side of the road and turned into the forest itself, Geralt felt as though his whole body was alive with awareness of the Elder’s power. But it was a soft, fond, almost somnolent kind of awareness--like the feeling of waking up slowly in the morning and stretching lazily under the covers, warm and relaxed, knowing someone he loved was in the bed beside him. Memories of Eskel and Yennefer and Ciri in her younger years flocked into Geralt’s mind as he left the main road with the vampires. 

A faint, overgrown footpath branched off the thoroughfare. It looked as though long years had passed since this had been used. Shadowed under the trees, the light filtered only faint and dim through the evergreens far, far above. It occurred to Geralt as they walked that this secluded place, just like Dettlaff’s own estate, was a perfect place for the overactive senses of vampires--or witchers.

By the time the trees parted to reveal a clearing in which sat a woodsman’s cottage, Geralt felt no anxiety, just a fascination to discover who, exactly, they would meet. And there, at last, seated on a rough wooden bench beside the cottage, sat the person who had so changed Geralt’s life. 

Though her claws were long and sharp, they did not frighten him. The noonday sun fell luminous on the dark brown planes of her bald scalp and bare chest. As with other vampires outside their human forms, she was flat-chested, but her body was otherwise round and full and soft. Somehow the comfortable shape of her spoke of her immense age. 

She wore only a skirt of pale greens and yellows, embroidered with Rasna text and some of the same symbols from Geralt’s own wedding garb. On her breastbone lay a huge ceremonial pendant. It was shaped into a ring capped with the bodies of two horned beasts. The metal of it was a bright greenish-gold and obviously not of this world.

Dettlaff and Regis bowed deeply to her, murmuring what Geralt could tell was a formal greeting in Rasna.

Geralt had met a variety of ruling monarchs over the course of his lifetime, both human and elven. He had been ultimately unimpressed by all of them. But for _her,_ with her power sweetly tangible on his skin, Geralt felt real awe. He bowed, deep and long, for once truly wanting to show his respect. 

“Welcome,” she murmured in Nordling, and even those two syllables shivered down Geralt’s spine. “I am glad to see you again, Dettlaff van der Eretein and Emiel Regis Rohellec Terzieff-Godefroy. And I have been waiting to meet you, Geralt of Rivia.”

Geralt thought vaguely that he should say something to her. But his mind was empty, calm in the way of a good meditation. Smiling, fangs gleaming, she beckoned him closer. 

When Geralt drew near enough to see that her eyes were an exquisite, complete black like Regis’s, Geralt knew that she was looking inside him. Under the Elder’s gaze, the last five long years of the war were laid bare: the violence, the grief, the memories which would never leave him. And the Elder saw, too, the long, difficult years of his life stretching all the way back to his childhood in Kaer Morhen and everything that had been to him, both good and bad. 

Distantly Geralt felt almost ashamed for bringing his monstrous experiences to the Elder for her to see. He hadn’t wanted to live through any of that, and even seeing it second-hand couldn’t be much better. He was grateful when her immense attention moved instead to his month in Dettlaff’s peaceful estate. She saw the way Geralt himself had relaxed and softened in that time, and especially the way he thought he could, if given a little longer, fall deeply in love. 

“You have time,” the Elder told him. “You have fulfilled your duty to the North. Even despite your hard life, you have learned to be a father, a lover. Things beyond an emotionless witcher.” She gestured one long hand outward. “You have time to learn more of that, now. Time to spend with your daughter, to help her understand the task that awaits her.”

A reflexive fear awoke in him at that. If the Elder knew about Ciri, was Ciri safe?

“Be at peace,” the Elder reassured him. “You are of one blood with us. Your daughter is _our_ daughter. Do you imagine I would let anyone harm her now? Do you imagine _they_ would allow that?” She indicated Dettlaff and Regis.

As soon as she said it, Geralt knew that of course none of them would allow harm to Ciri. This Elder had managed to end a war prompted by another Elder--and if the Elders were this powerful and she had stopped _them,_ then she could do anything. If Emhyr came for Ciri, if the Aen Elle did, if _anyone_ came to hurt her, Ciri could not possibly be any safer than she was with this Elder’s protection--this Elder who could see in Geralt everything beloved, exceptional, and magical about Ciri. 

The knowledge that they had such a powerful ally lifted a weight from Geralt's shoulders that had pressed upon him since he had first taken Ciri as his child. Being her father had always meant standing against enemies vastly more powerful and terrible than he was. And in the last five years, it had meant fearing too that out of love for him, because of what he had trained her to be, that she would die at the hands of a vampire. 

Now that would not happen. It _would not happen,_ he told himself, and the relief of that left him shaky-legged and tremulous as a newborn foal. 

He thought about this as the Elder exchanged words in Rasna with Dettlaff and Regis. Which was when Geralt noticed the person at the Elder’s side. 

Her presence so eclipsed everything else that Geralt had completely missed the man before. But there beside her was a small, plump man in spectacles, his black hair liberally streaked with grey. When he noticed Geralt looking at him, he smiled. 

Rising, he gestured Geralt away to the edge of the clearing where banks of flowering herbs grew. Geralt could still feel the Elder as though his whole body was a compass pointing toward north, but not looking directly at her helped him focus better. 

“Pleased to meet you,” the man said, and gave Geralt a small bow. “My name is Gao Yunduan. It’s a very rare group we’re a part of, though now that you’re so publicly married to those two, I hope there will be more of us in time.”

Geralt’s brain was still slow and cumbersome after his experience with the Elder, so he found it difficult to interpret what Gao meant by this. But the longer Geralt looked, the more he realized that Gao was, to Geralt’s immense shock, completely human. Which was when Gao’s meaning at last got through to Geralt. 

“You’re her lover,” Geralt said, and then felt rather silly for saying something so obvious. “You mean that--that we’re both the lovers of _tiur-ziva?”_

Gao only smiled. “Yes, I am. I met her some thirty years ago when I came south to study linguistics. She and I come here sometimes to get away from the family. With senses as keen as hers, sometimes she needs a break from all the fuss. Though this time, of course, coming here was more to meet you.” He gave a slow nod. “Given what she said, it seems that things have gone well for you?”

“Yes,” Geralt admitted. “Very well, to my surprise. But how do you...” He trailed off, unsure how to ask what he wanted to know without being offensive. He was keenly aware that all the vampires could hear them, and that the Elder could probably even see his thoughts right now.

“How do I...?” Gao prompted. 

“Her presence is...intense," Geralt said at last. "It’s amazing, don’t get me wrong, but in the day-to-day…”

This only got a little laugh and smile from Gao. “Oh, that’s because you’re a witcher, I’d imagine, and bonded to two _tiur-ziva._ But she and I are not bonded, and we won’t be, because even if it were to work, it would ruin what we have. As we are, she is just another person to me, albeit one I love very much. Which is why I’m so wonderful to her, I think. Even very important people need to just be treated as people, sometimes.”

Geralt blinked at this. After a moment, Gao’s warm expression grew more serious.

“I did offer to bond with her, if it would end the war,” Gao said gently. “I have family in Kovir. My brother was among the first to die because of the hostilities. So even though I have been living in the south, the war was of great import to me.” He shook his head, eyes going distant. “It took us far too long to realize that there was any way to convince the Northern Elder to listen to us about stopping the war. But even once my beloved forced the Northern Elder to admit that the bonding of a _tiur-ziva_ to a mortal would make mortals of one blood with them, and thus subject to the kill-no-kin edict, he refused to accept me as an option.” Gao made a face. “More than a millennia ago he was in love with my beloved. But she refused him, saying that he was too bitter and angry. That has meant that he adamantly refused to consider any bond she undertook with a mortal to be valid, determined to believe that it was just her spiting him at the expense of all of his people.” Gesturing to where the others stood, Gao continued, “Finally, Regis heard of the impasse and stepped forward, determined that it should be him bonding with someone he had never even met--thus removing any accusations of bias. And once Regis had set his mind upon it, Dettlaff of course followed along, and because of what he is, the Northern Elder had backed himself into a corner.” Gao sighed, his earnest gaze heavy on Geralt. “I am happy that I have not been forced to change the nature of the relationship I treasure so much. But I want you to know that it wasn’t that she and I were unwilling to try. We wouldn’t have been so selfish if there had been any other way that the Northern Elder would accept.”

Turning, Geralt looked back at Regis, at his small, understated human form. Regis was in conversation with the Elder. He didn’t seem to be paying any attention to Geralt or Gao. 

Geralt had already admired and agreed with Regis’s choice to end the war. But hearing from an outsider that Regis had found a way he could atone for his past mistakes and immediately stepped forward to do it--and that Dettlaff had loved Regis enough to join him in doing so, even if it meant bringing strife into his family--well. Geralt couldn’t help but love someone who would make a necessary sacrifice to do what was right. 

Regis caught Geralt looking and gave him a shy smile. Helplessly Geralt smiled in return. 

They did not stay much longer. They were back on the main road and turning northward before the sun had moved much past its zenith. Regis took the driver’s seat this time, with Dettlaff and Geralt both walking alongside. 

For a long time, Geralt walked in silence, and Dettlaff and Regis seemed similarly moved to wordless contemplation. At last, some hour later, Geralt spoke. 

“When we get back to Tagerach, I could open up the empty wing,” he said slowly. “Clean in there, maybe try to repair some of the furniture. Yennefer doesn’t like close quarters. If she’s going to stay for long enough to properly meet everyone and see what they’re like, she’ll need her own space away from everyone else. And...well. I imagine you won’t want to hear me fucking Eskel, either. And my daughter won’t want to have to hear me with anyone. So some distance would be helpful.”

When Dettlaff turned to look at him and Geralt dared to look back, Dettlaff’s eyes were hungry. 

“You’re really staying.”

“I said I wanted to, didn’t I?” Geralt said, almost embarrassed now. “Look, I...at some point I may want to go back on the Path for a while. And I do need to take some time soon to go get my horse and swords and everything else. But when I leave, I’ll come back, all right?”

Dettaff smiled, relieved and happy. And in the driver’s seat, Regis’s mouth curled upward too, a small, private look of contentment. 

“All right,” Regis agreed for both of them. “Well, then. If you’ll drive, I can read again.”

Geralt nodded, climbing up the side of the cart. Before Regis could finish moving into the back, Geralt caught him and kissed him. In clear surprise, Regis kissed back. 

When they parted, Regis slid into the bed of the cart looking pleased. And when Dettlaff climbed up onto the seat with Geralt and set one hand affectionately on Geralt’s thigh, Geralt felt truly joyful. 

With half his mind Geralt listened to Regis read. With the other half he made plans for all the things he could do to make their home ready for when Eskel and Yennefer and Jaskier and Ciri arrived.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is, the end of the fic that has been known among my Witcher fandom acquaintances as "Regis & Dettlaff Tame a Feral Husband." 
> 
> When I started writing this I thought it'd be maybe 5k (hilarious in retrospect). I've worked on this fic for more than half a year in total. Thanks to everybody who has read and commented on this! If you enjoyed this or got something out of it, please leave a comment to let me know. :D


End file.
